


Threading The Needle Of Destiny

by Flamesong



Series: Repairing the World [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Anti-Faunus Racism (RWBY), Body Modification, Canon compliant through Volume 6 then AU, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Romance, Excessive use of Relics, F/F, Fix-It, I guess? break it worse then fix it, Jinn deserves better, Redemption, Resurrection, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporal Shenanigans, This is a Salem redemption fic, Trans Female Character, Written pre-Volume 7, to Enemies Again to Lovers Again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2020-09-24 05:42:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 194,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20353327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flamesong/pseuds/Flamesong
Summary: So much has gone wrong. The war between Salem's forces and her opposition has nearly wiped out both sides with no clear victor. If the gods were summoned back today, a negative judgement would be certain.Is there a way to fix it all? To salvage what remains of the world and build it back again? After all the creation of weapons and destruction of kingdoms, when knowledge is no longer enough... Here, at the end, it all comes down to Choice.





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Cover art by Alumirust: https://alumirust.tumblr.com/commissions

Once upon a time, there stood a lonely tower, which sheltered a lonely girl named Salem. She was rescued from her solitude, only to lose her savior soon after to a cruel twist of chance. She petitioned the brother gods of Light and Darkness for his return and she was denied twice over, but even as they cursed her with immortality to keep her away from her beloved, she refused to accept defeat. Salem led the kingdoms of the world against the gods, and in their spiteful majesty they saw fit to erase all of humanity except for Salem herself. They enforced upon her the very thing she feared most, the profound isolation that she had fought all her life to escape, and once there was no more they could do to punish her the gods departed, leaving their creation but a remnant of what it once was. 

In time, mankind grew to walk the face of the world once again, now accompanied by a sister species called the Faunus. Salem’s lover was sent back and given a curse of his own: to reincarnate until he completed a task which he had not let the God of Light fully explain. Sent into the world along with him were four Relics tied to the founding principles of humanity: Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and Choice. The lovers reunited for a time, but clashed over their visions of the future and their views of the old gods. They separated, and the two eternals schemed against one another for thousands of years. 

On an island known as Patch in the ancient kingdom of Vale, there stood a humble house, which sheltered a cheerful girl named Yang. She trained as a Huntress against the Grimm and attended the academy run by Salem’s former love, and she was present when the school was razed. Yang and her team journeyed with their reborn leader around the world, collecting the Relics to safeguard them away from Salem’s reach, though in this pursuit they were only half successful. The team’s numbers dwindled even as their powers grew until in the end only Yang remained, still determined to destroy the immortal witch. 

They met on the plains once home to the God of Darkness, where Salem’s first kingdom had fallen to ruin, where she maintained her home even still with the knowledge that her rival would never willingly set foot there again. One woman alone on each side, bearing the power of the God of Light through the Relics they held, and the God of Darkness through the magic they wielded, equals on the field of battle. It was there that Salem and Yang would make their choices, and determine if Remnant was to be restored to its former glory, destroyed utterly by wrathful gods, or perhaps set on a new path entirely. It was there that the second age of humanity came to a close. 


	2. Cycle 1: The End

All was silent and calm. Hushed and empty were the plains of Darkness. Not an animal was in sight on the barren expanse, nor a plant, nor even the tiniest footstep left in the red dust… save for the single trail of booted prints stretching backwards east by southeast as far as the eye could see. But no eye had ever turned to gaze upon the windswept rock behind; its bleak emptiness was indistinguishable from the desolate space still ahead, and the lone girl making the trek had no need for a reminder of how far she had come. 

She had hiked three days now, eating preserved food as she walked, stopping only to sleep in the shelter of a protruding rock or crystal for a scant six hours before moving on, ever westward, toward the castle of the wicked witch. The High Council of Vacuo had been happy to give the savior of Shade Academy an airship ride to the deserted continent north of their territory, but there the wounded kingdom’s generosity ended. No Huntsman dared come with her, not even a single step off the shuttle before they turned and fled to a home they believed was safe. 

This was the land of legends, where no kingdom in surviving history had ever been established, where even the most unobtrusive coastal village was flattened within a year by colossal, ancient Grimm. Many warnings they had given the young woman, but she would not be deterred from her mission. And though she carried in her heart enough sadness to be a shining beacon to the Grimm, every monster that approached found itself annihilated at a great distance by a single swing of the golden sword she carried, dispersed into smoke as if it had never even crawled from its inky spawning pool. 

Man, born from dust. Grimm, born from ichor. Each destined one day to return, and for their substance to rise again in altered form. Such was the cycle of life and death that the gods had set into balance, which only the power of the gods could disrupt. Just as a Maiden’s magic could erase a dying human into motes of light, so too did the Relic of Destruction eliminate all trace of its victims. The sword came with no sheath; it had never had one, and was never meant to. 

The girl trudged onward, holding one Relic in her robotic right hand, with a second clipped on her belt. The blue lamp known as the Relic of Knowledge swung back and forth with each step she took, and so it had been affixed on her left, out of reach of any accidental contact with the sword. Though her group had once attempted to break the scepter of Creation to keep it out of their enemy’s grasp and no mortal means had so much as scratched its surface, no one could speculate on the effects of using another Relic itself to do the deed. And by now, that particular opportunity was long since lost. 

She came to the top of a hill and for the first time saw in the distance something other than barren red stone and giant crystals. High on an isolated mesa, most of a castle stood tall. A jumble of broken stone was piled up on one side of the formation’s base beneath the missing wing of the palace, the rockslide perhaps due to a simple natural disaster, or perhaps the last remaining evidence of some ancient lovers’ quarrel. Whatever the cause, it drew the young traveller’s attention for but a moment, before her gaze fixated upon the light shining from a few of the castle’s windows. 

Though it had been a long, shallow climb up to her current vantage point, the far side of the hill was a steep cliff dropping down to the ground fifty feet below. But this was no issue to the master of the Relic of Destruction. She backed up a ways, then made a single uppercut swing of the sword which would have scored a line into the dirt had this been a normal weapon. Instead, the wielder’s focus manifested through the Relic and directed its power, erasing from existence a three foot wide channel in the rock so that what was left formed a pathway down, much like a sculptor cutting away everything that was not their desired product. 

So began the final stretch of her journey, the goal now in sight. It passed as uneventfully as the rest. A Nevermore glided through the distant sky, but its attention never fell upon the single human invading its domain. It was only once she had nearly reached the mesa’s edge and had begun to contemplate the exact form of stone which she could erase to leave a staircase behind that something new on her long trek finally appeared. 

Ten feet in front of her, a point of radiant yellow-white light blinked into existence and grew rapidly, first a sphere, then widening in parts and stretching vertically until it approximated a human form. The light faded, and before the traveller now stood a woman dressed all in black, her deathly pale skin matched by white hair pulled up into a large ornamental bun. She held in one hand a long silver scepter tipped with crystal and wore an opulent jeweled crown upon her head, and she spoke the first words the girl had heard since setting foot on the continent. 

“Hello, Yang.”

The weary girl stared forward, too exhausted to even muster any facial expression beyond a single raised eyebrow. “Salem. Haven’t seen you since the Fall of Vale. Can’t say I’ve really missed your face.”

Salem ignored the girl’s snide remarks. “It’s nice of you to finally join us,” she said, gesturing back toward the castle behind her. “Welcome to the once and future capitol of Remnant. You’ve even brought the other Relics too, just what I’ll be needing to really get things started.”

Yang’s eyes narrowed. “Who is this ‘us’ I’m joining? I seem to remember killing most of your lackeys at one point or another.” She twirled the golden sword in her hands. “Some of them I’ve even killed more than once.”

“So you have… and I suppose you’ve come to kill me too, now? It won’t work, you know. There was a time when even I was trying to kill Salem. And if I couldn’t do it, what hope do you think you have?”

“I have this.” Yang held up the sword and pointed it at the other woman’s chest. “The God of Light made you immortal, so if anything can undo that it would be more of the same god’s power. Whether it works or not… Remnant deserves at least a chance to be free of you.” 

She lowered the blade to her side again, a little quicker than she needed to, with a slight flick of the wrist as if she was launching an attack against the emptiness beside her. Careful to keep her face neutral as she concentrated, she focused her will through the Relic and deleted a large cube of earth from in front of her as the tip of the sword was lowered past that space. 

Salem’s eyes went wide as she dropped into the pit that had suddenly opened up beneath her feet. There was a dull thud of impact, then moments later she rose up again as the ground filled back, created anew by the scepter she now held with its crystal pointed down. She straightened up as the ground settled into its shape again, now standing on a low mound to give herself another few inches of height over Yang and add to her imposing presence. 

“Very clever…” she told the girl, a slight smile upon her face. “I’m glad I decided to meet you out here, away from anything delicate in my castle. I suppose this means we’re getting on with it? As you wish…” She paused, still smiling, but received no response except a grim look and a shake of Yang’s left arm to activate the single gauntlet she wore. 

Salem raised the scepter of Creation and jabbed it forward and up toward the empty air above Yang’s head. Without even looking up, Yang swung the sword in a wide arc over herself to destroy whatever her enemy had made, while punching twice with her other hand to send a pair of bullets toward the witch. Salem merely held up her empty right hand and the projectiles burst into rings of purple light as they impacted an invisible barrier in front of her. 

As Yang’s overhead swing concluded, she twisted her body to transform that momentum into a wide forward slash toward her opponent’s feet. A new void opened up in the ground, but this time Salem was prepared. She leapt backward, right hand outstretched below like it was propelling her, and once safe from the chasm she drifted gently to the ground. A glowing ball of energy appeared in her hand, swirling with orange and maroon, as Yang raced forward to close the distance between them. 

Salem’s hand made just the slightest motion backwards, but it was enough to tip off the other girl that her magic had finished charging and an assault was imminent. She jumped, pushing off with her right foot just a little harder than her left, and counteracted the spin she had given her body with the familiar backward thrust of her single gauntlet. She held the golden sword close to her body and stretched her legs out straight as the intense recoil tossed her into the air, to keep her shape regular enough that she would soar rather than tumble. 

The magic blast passed harmlessly behind her, but something thin and silver whizzed past alarmingly close to Yang’s body as she rolled through the air over the narrow gap she had made. She threw out her right hand to stick the tip of her sword into the red dirt, careful not to exercise the Relic’s power, and pivoted to land on her feet. She pulled the blade free, intending to use that same motion as the beginning of a new strike, but as she lifted her head along with the sword, another flash of silver in her peripheral vision stole her attention. 

Yang wrenched her arm up as fast as it could move, abandoning the thought of sending another wave of destructive force from her weapon. A metal bolt maybe eight inches long zoomed toward her and glanced off her metal arm, deflecting luckily to the outside where it passed over her shoulder, rather than the other option just millimeters away which would have sent it directly into her chest. Yang spared a quick glance back to see its path, but by the time she had turned her head the bolt had already sunk half its length into a tall black crystal some fifty meters away and cracked it. 

The Relic of Creation: it’s also a gun. Or, as Salem was using it, a crossbow. She aimed the scepter again, ready to create another bolt and then create some momentum to send it on its way, but Yang preemptively dodged and this bolt too flew wide. 

Yang rose out of her roll and sent a wave of energy from her sword as she continued running forward. The witch stumbled and a burst of magic shot out to her side, uncontrolled, released before it was ready. She looked down and gasped, not in pain but indignation as she saw what the sword had done. Salem’s body remained unassailable but the black robe she wore was just a simple piece of cloth, and it now sported a clean slice up from the side of her waist up to the opposite shoulder. 

She clasped an arm across her midsection to pin both sides in place, and thrust the scepter directly up into the air. The hard-packed clay beneath her feet rippled and burst upward into a tall wave spreading outward around her – then froze just as it reached its peak and began to crest. Salem called out to the red-haired girl beyond the barrier as she turned her magic inward, manifesting stitches to seamlessly mend her robe in an instant. 

“Hey! I _ like _ this dress! Let’s try to keep it in one piece, okay?” 

Winds whipped up around the ring of stone, carrying dust and grit to abrade its surface as outside, Yang’s eyes flared with the red and white glow of Spring. “I’m trying to kill you and you’re concerned about your clothes?” she yelled, the air currents under her will carrying the words clearly through the gale. Dark clouds gathered overhead, and both humans below could feel the air grow drier as every droplet of humidity was pulled upward into the growing gray mass. 

The wall of earth crumbled, and both women had magic ready for the instant the way between them was clear. A spray of razor-sharp icicles flew from Yang’s outstretched hand just as Salem released a sphere of pure energy back along the same path. The attacks passed through each other without interaction and both found their targets. 

The battle paused for a moment as Salem plucked frozen shards out of her flesh with annoyance, and Yang picked herself up off the dirt where the blast had thrown her. “You know,” Salem said, holding her hands up in supplication, “if you wanted to stab me, there’s a window _ right here! _” She pointed toward the diamond-shaped gap just below the neckline of her dress. “Look, it’s even right over my heart! Did Oz never teach you how to aim at his school?”

Yang screamed in frustration and activated her Semblance to release a burst of flame over her body and her hair, but then canceled it again. The hit she had taken was a hard one, but still only a single hit, so her Aura was still strong and she would gain little from her power. In addition, her Semblance only enhanced her physical strength, leaving the Relic and her Maiden powers unaffected. 

“If you want it so much, why don’t you just come over here and let me do it? Then we’ll both find out if this sword can actually kill you!”

Salem chuckled briefly. “No thanks. I’d rather not take that chance… even if I do think it’s a very slim chance.” She lifted the Relic of Creation high. “Instead, how about I–”

Lightning struck the upraised metal staff. Salem wheezed as all the breath went out of her and she took a step back with her right foot to steady herself. The current flowed fiercely through her, seeking the ground, but even as the electricity tried to lock her muscles in place she fought through it and slowly brought her free hand up from her side. She directed the magic within her to interact with the current and turned the flow around, directing it up from her midsection to reach the opposite shoulder from where it had entered. She stepped forward again and stretched out her empty hand toward the Maiden who had called the storm. 

Faced with an imminent blast of her own lightning, sure to find a path to her no matter how she moved, the girl took the only defensive option left to her. Yang unhooked the Relic of Knowledge from her belt and crouched down, trying to make her silhouette as small as possible to hide behind the lamp. The lightning bolt flew free of Salem’s fingers and struck the Relic’s side; much of its energy was absorbed within, while the rest splashed out in all directions. What little shock still passed through the girl was mitigated completely by her Aura. 

Though Yang was correct that the Relic, being indestructible through mortal means, could serve as a shield in an emergency situation, not everyone present was as pleased with its use as such. Where Creation had simply sat in its nonliving silence through the many attempts to shatter it, Knowledge is a different sort. I am not some spirit who dwells within the lamp and comes out to answer your questions. I am the lamp, and I feel what happens to me. But I am bound to only speak when called upon by name, so I made no comment to the pair fighting around me. 

Yang got to her feet again and stared down the witch. The light leaking from the edges of her eyes grew brighter and slowly she lifted off the ground, enveloped in a swirling sphere of wind. She hovered twenty feet above the plains and made silent eye contact a moment longer, then looked away to spin a full circle around, sword pointed outward, directing its destructive magic toward every crystal she could see. 

The black and purple stones jutting up from the dry ground shattered into countless tiny shards, each new break emitting a flash of darkness around it for an instant, giving the combined effect of a vast ring of black fog rising from the ground around them and fading again within moments. The crystal needles swirled and rose until they formed an entire hemispherical dome a hundred feet across around the pair. 

Salem spread her arms wide and looked to the sky as she too gracefully ascended to match Yang’s position. A thin shell of translucent red shimmered into place around her and she waited expectantly for Yang’s next move. 

With a sweep of her left hand, the Spring Maiden directed the shards to fall towards her opponent. Salem merely floated quietly, confident that her shield would stop the barrage, and it did… as Yang had counted on it to do. These crystals dotting the plains were a form of Dust, influenced upon formation by their surroundings to become uniformly the Dust of darkness, which swallowed all light around it when its power was released. 

Once Salem’s spherical haven was fully wreathed in an impenetrable blackness, Yang found herself free to spring the trap that she had baited the witch into. As the constant hail of Dust continued, blocking her enemy’s view outside, she pointed the Relic of Destruction toward the dark sphere and concentrated, not on the barrier nor the woman within it, but on the air itself. 

In an instant, the space around Salem became pure vacuum, unable to be replenished by new air as the magic sphere blocked out everything from its exterior. The bombardment with crystal daggers continued, and though Salem knew she could not be killed even by ten thousand tiny stab wounds, she still preferred to avoid the pain of enduring it. Her body gasped for air as any mortal human would, even as she fought to overcome the reflex. 

Barely able to concentrate on maintaining the sphere, she dropped out of the air. Her shield followed, sinking itself partway into the earth through sheer force of impact. Within, Salem remained suspended a few feet off the ground simply due to the magic’s dumb insistence on keeping her in its center and the rest of Remnant firmly outside. 

Yang plunged downward after her, the Relic sword held in both hands now, poised to deliver a killing blow. She stopped the rain of Dust with a thought and landed atop the sphere as the darkness cleared. A light shone from within, brighter as she sliced through the magic barrier, but shrinking rapidly as Yang dropped through to the ground. She glanced around her but the yellow glow had winked out, and Salem was gone. 

She cast about for a corresponding glow of Salem’s reappearance and found her fifty feet behind, leaning on the Relic of Creation as she caught her breath. “Using magic to run away now?” Yang challenged. “Too afraid to fight me hand to hand? Without magic you’d be nothing, just a defenseless old woman, but _ I’m still combat-ready! _” She held up both arms and commanded what remained of her dome of splinters to assemble into a swarm behind her. 

“You want a more physical fight, is that it?” Salem spoke barely above her normal volume, just enough so that Yang could hear her without putting in the effort or emotion of yelling her words. She advanced slowly on the girl’s position and continued, “Do you really still think you can win? Maybe if you still had all your friends with you, you might have a better shot. But you don’t! You let them all get killed. Remember these?”

Salem pointed the staff forward and a silver rapier manifested in front of it and shot toward the girl. Yang brought her sword up to intercept it but before she could destroy the conjured weapon, Salem snapped her fingers and it burst into sparkling white dust, reforming a moment later as a net of loosely woven black ribbons. The sword sliced effortlessly through each strand it touched, but the rest kept going and tangled themselves all over Yang’s body. 

The Maiden extricated herself and sent whips of black crystal coiling toward the witch. Salem waved her scepter of Creation again and brought a golden shield into existence, round except for two large divots opposite each other, which orbited her at a medium distance and deflected the shards of Dust. Another use of the Relic’s power conjured a pair of scythes, one red and one gray, which arced out to either side as she threw a long hammer directly at Yang’s head. 

Yang rolled under the simultaneous assaults and intensified the barrage of crystal fragments from all directions. Salem conjured a second shield to help block them, a white kite shield emblazoned with a golden crescent, and when even that became insufficient against the hail she lowered the scepter and threw up her other hand to surround herself with transient glyphs which absorbed the Dust and then vanished. 

“You’re using an awful lot of magic that isn’t Creation,” Yang called out to her. “Not too worried about running out when your life’s on the line, now are you?” She swung the Relic of Destruction in a wide overhead arc and sent out a wave of force that cut the golden shield in half. 

“What are you talking about? Magic is just like Aura, it comes back when you’re not using it!” Salem retaliated after the loss of her shield by calling forth a new rapier, this time paired with a similar slender sword and matching parrying dagger, and she sent the three flying simultaneously in a narrow cone. “And with training like mine, I can regain strength almost as fast as I use it. Your magic will take a lot longer to recover.”

“If Ozpin gave up most of his magic capacity to create mine and the other Maidens’ power, it must have been the same for you. All I have to do is wear us both down and then I can still pack a punch when you can’t.” 

Salem clenched her fist and pulled at the two scythes laying far behind Yang, calling them back into the fray. “What did he tell you?” she asked, almost laughing at the idea. “That’s not how having children works! Besides, any one Maiden uses far more magic in her lifetime than Oz or I typically do.” She thrust out the scepter again and a pair of olive green guns bound together by a chain flew toward Yang’s legs. “If someone’s maximum capacity could be lost, your Spring supply would have fizzled out long before it ever got to you! Ozpin lied to you, like he always lies. He doesn’t want people to start expecting him to be useful.”

Yang jumped over the spinning chain and slashed toward the red scythe coming at her from one side, cleanly separating its blade from the handle. She swapped the sword to her other hand to catch the gray scythe in a firm robotic grip, and pivoted to redirect its momentum toward Salem. “How do I know you’re not the one lying?” she demanded. 

“Would I have any reason to lie to you?” Salem sidestepped the blade. “I’ve made my intentions clear since the first day we met, there in the Vale Council’s chamber.” She smiled as she reminisced on the events. “You all burst in there with a Relic and an urgent warning and I’m just sitting there typing into some guy’s computer, hair down, veins concealed, wearing a nice blue instead of black… But Oz recognized me. We always know each other, no matter how long we spend apart. And I suppose the dead bodies in the other Council members’ chairs might have also been a clue. Man, that was the best day I’ve had in eighty years…” 

“How many people died that day?” Yang intensified the barrage, bringing the last of her swarm down all at once as she slashed wildly with the sword of Destruction. “You killed my friend! My girlfriend! My teacher! My mother! And how many more? How many innocent lives were lost over that crown? A crown that you already had before the battle began!” 

Yang’s body crackled with lightning and the wind around the pair picked up again. Salem backed away at the sight of her power building, trying to keep enough distance between them that she would have time to react to the coming assault. A thin layer of frost spread outward over the ground from Yang’s footsteps and above it came a wave of chilly air like early spring just before a storm. 

Salem let go of the few conjured weapons she was still controlling and manifested another thin shell of energy around herself, half guessing and half merely hoping that Yang would not try to suffocate her again. She stuck the scepter under her arm and brought her hands together, and closed her eyes to concentrate. A ball of pale blue grew between her palms, larger and brighter with every passing second. 

She thrust her hands out to either side, not caring that the Relic of Creation fell to the ground beside her, desperate to release her magic before Yang unleashed her own. Blue light pulsed outward in five concentric spheres and annihilated the last remaining crystal shards. Yang was knocked back and a powerful bolt of lightning shot up into the sky, branching into a cone of electricity as it traveled. 

Salem quickly reached down to grab the scepter, and swept its tip forward across Yang’s legs. The stone beneath her rippled upward to surround the girl from the knees down, immobilizing her. “Yang, stop this!” Salem called. “Look at us! We could do this all day, and for what? Neither of us is going to run out of magic any time soon. Can’t we settle this some other way?”

“Those are the words of someone who knows she’s losing,” Yang snarled back at her. She beat at the rock with her gauntlet and cracked it, but could not quite free herself. 

“I mean it!” Salem stowed the scepter again and held up her empty hands. “Yang… I want you to know, I am not an unreasonable queen. Give me what I want and I will let you go free. Pick a town and it won’t suffer a single Grimm attack for the rest of your lifetime. You could leave here and live a peaceful life.”

“And for what?” Yang echoed the witch’s words. “I have nothing left to live for after what you’ve done to my friends, my family, my kingdom. My only purpose now is to destroy you and I’ll fight as long as it takes.”

“Eventually you’ll get tired, regardless of your magic or Aura. You’ll need food, you’ll need sleep. I have no such restrictions. I magicked those needs away ages ago – though I admit, I forgot about the breathing reflex. You really got me with that one.” Salem pointed the scepter casually over her shoulder and created a large leather armchair, and sat back into it without even looking to make sure her conjuration had worked. “Your mother had the right idea, Yang. You can’t beat me. Just get away from it all, save yourself. Leave the Relics and walk away, and I won’t stop you.”

Yang looked up from carefully carving her legs free with the golden sword. “I don’t believe you,” she spat. 

Salem sighed. “Again, I have no reason to lie. But, as proof of my sincerity… I will give you something else to live for.” She raised the Relic of Creation and pointed it off to the side, well away from Yang so it could not be perceived as a threat. An orb of white-gold light formed, six feet across, its lowest point just inches above the hard-packed earth. Bands of color shifted across its surface, shades rippling from pure white to almost copper and everything in between, until finally a deep red seemed to push through from the inside and bubble up to cover the sphere’s surface. 

The light flicked out as quickly as it had come, but the space where it had been was no longer empty air. A human girl dropped from the orb’s center onto the soil and lay there unmoving. She was dressed all in red, the same red of the magic she had emerged from, the same red to which Yang had dyed her hair almost two years ago when tragedy had struck in Atlas. A hood covered the girl’s face, but as Yang and Salem gazed upon her she stirred, and slowly brought one hand up to her head. 

“...Ruby?” Yang pulled her ankles free of the rock and rushed over to kneel beside the other girl. 

“Your sister is alive again,” Salem confirmed. “Leave the sword and the lamp, and take her with you when you go.”

Yang kept the sword firmly in hand as she touched her sister’s shoulder. Ruby looked up at her and blinked repeatedly. “What… happened? Where am…” Her eyes focused on her sister’s face. “Yang?”

“I’m here, Ruby. I’ve got you. You’re safe.” She helped her sister up to a sitting position and hugged her tightly. “I’ve missed you so much,” Yang whispered. 

“What is this place? I was with Weiss and Blake. We were… I don’t remember what we were doing. We looked for you for so long. It was nice there. It was—” Ruby frowned. “Why can’t I remember? I was just there…” 

“Take it slow, sis.” Yang gave one more good squeeze then let her sister go, and they sat facing each other on the dirt. Behind Ruby, Salem remained in her chair, now reading a book that Yang was sure had not existed just a moment before. “What’s the last thing you do remember?” she asked. 

Ruby thought for a long moment. “Um… Atlas? That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? We had the Relic of Knowledge.” She glanced down at the lamp attached to Yang’s belt. “You still have it. It’s safe.” Her eyes narrowed. “Why did Weiss and Blake and I never talk about the Relic? What’s wrong with me? I know I didn’t forget… it’s like it wasn’t important anymore, but of course it is. I remember Atlas, I’m sure of that. We got there and…” Ruby gasped and clutched at Yang’s hand. “Ren! Is he…?”

Yang closed her eyes, and laid down the sword to take Ruby’s other hand. “Ren is dead,” she said. “Tyrian had a new tail, new venom… even Jaune’s Semblance couldn’t heal him. Jaune and Nora wanted to take Ren’s body home. Qrow set up the meeting with General Ironwood and then he went with them, to protect them along the way.”

“I remember the meeting. Ironwood couldn’t help us. And the Winter Maiden wasn’t in Atlas to retrieve Creation.”

“Oh, she was. Ironwood was just too scared to tell us the truth. At least he had the spine to admit Knowledge would be safer with us than with him.” Yang rolled her eyes and shifted to a more comfortable sitting position. “After that things only got worse. Cinder came back, with that girl who nearly killed me on Torchwick’s train. Qrow had gone, and Ozpin was having internal troubles... we couldn’t fight a Maiden.” Tears began to well up in Yang’s eyes. “We injured her badly, but Cinder killed you, Ruby. That’s where you’ve been all this time. That’s why you don’t remember.”

“But… that means… Weiss?” Ruby’s hands went limp in Yang’s grip and a look of horror came over her face. 

“And Blake,” Yang said, choking up as the first tears dripped down her cheeks. “Everyone. We lost, Ruby. I was the only one left. I kept on fighting because, well… it was go big or go home, and I had no home left to go to. So I kept going big until I was fighting Salem one on one. I lived, but… a tie isn’t going to stop her.”

Ruby reached out to comfort her older sister as Yang had done for her just a minute ago. “You must have done something right if it brought me back,” she offered. 

Her attempt at encouragement fell on deaf ears. Yang nestled closer in Ruby’s embrace and whimpered, “But I didn’t bring you back. Salem did. She has the Relic of Creation.”

“What?” Ruby looked around, but couldn’t turn to see Salem without disturbing her sister. She seemed to realize now where she was, piecing together the barren red plains with her memory of asking me a question and seeing the God of Darkness’s home as part of my response. “That’s her castle, isn’t it?” She tilted her head toward the tall mesa to one side. “Well, she wouldn’t have brought me back unless you did something to make her, right? I can still give you the credit. How’s dad? He’ll want to know I’m back.”

“He took the news hard, but last I saw him he was doing okay.” Yang’s tears were trickling out now and her voice regained a little bit of its strength. “He was busy helping rebuild Vale when I left. Uncle Qrow too, but… he was unstable. He could have killed himself by now and I wouldn’t know.”

“Dad will keep an eye on him, I’m sure of it.” Ruby was ever the optimist. “What happened in Vale?”

Yang covered her face with her hands. “Are you sure you want to hear it?” she asked. “A lot of people didn’t make it out of the Fall of Vale. Many times I’ve wished I died in Atlas alongside you just so I would have missed it all.”

“Tell me. No matter how bad, I have to know what happened.”

“Alright then…” Yang sighed heavily. “We got word from Glynda that Salem was making a move on the Relic of Choice, the one held at Beacon. There was nothing else for us in Atlas so we left to go back to Vale. We picked up Jaune, Nora, and Qrow again along the way and they had the Summer Maiden with them, a girl named Xuri. Vacuo native – no idea what she was doing all the way on the other end of Sanas. She was a zebra Faunus with striped skin and a tail, unbelievably pretty…”

Ruby cleared her throat awkwardly. 

“Right, sorry. Do you remember what Ozpin said about the Beacon Relic? That he made it more challenging to get at than at the other schools? You told us that day shortly before the attack on Haven. Well, we got to the vault and it was wide open, and the Relic was gone.” 

Ruby gasped in shock, but Yang merely scoffed and kept on with her story. “Turns out all those additional protections Ozpin talked about just meant that to open the door, you needed both the Fall Maiden and one of her parents. Because _ of course _ that would be Ozpin himself. Of course Salem wouldn’t show up in person. Right?”

“She was there?” Ruby shuddered. “And here I thought sleeping one building over from Cinder during the Vytal Festival was bad.”

“I was there,” came a voice from behind the hooded girl. Ruby gently removed Yang’s weight from her lap and turned around, coming face to face for the first time with the woman she had sworn to stop at all costs. Salem reclined in her armchair, her book still held in one hand but now with a clear crystal wine glass in the other, which was filled halfway with a viscous black fluid. 

“Salem…” Ruby named her foe, her voice almost a growl. 

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just waiting for Yang to make up her mind about whether she’d rather have two Relics in her possession, or you alive.” 

“Ignore her, Ruby.” Yang placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder to bring the girl’s attention back to her. “She doesn’t want another fight because she knows I can take her. So, back in Vale…”

“Wait.” Ruby turned back to the witch to ask her one vitally important question. “Is that liquid from the pools of Grimm?” 

Salem extended her hand as if to offer the glass to Ruby. “Would you like to find out?”

Ruby grimaced and shook her head. “I’ll pass.”

“Good choice.” Salem withdrew her hand and drained the glass in a single gulp. 

“So, back in Vale,” Yang repeated, more emphatically. “We raced over to warn the Council. Ozpin was kind of panicking at that point. Apparently Choice is the strongest of the four, which is why he kept it at his own school and put the extra effort into locking it away. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen it used, and Jinn only touched on it briefly. Anyway… we were too late again. Every member of the Council was dead, and Salem was there. She’d infiltrated the building somehow.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t infiltrate anywhere. I showed my Huntress credentials at the door and they let me in. The Vale Council granted me an official audience. And then I murdered them.”

“That’s impossible,” Yang stated flatly. “You can’t counterfeit a Huntress ID card. They’re too tightly controlled. You need transcripts, and an exam registration with the kingdom’s Council.”

“Well then, it’s a good thing the late Headmaster Lionheart was working for me. Officially, I graduated from Haven Academy and have been working as a Huntress for seventeen years. With a rather impressive record, I might add.” Salem gave a smug grin. “Yang and her little group there found me just as I was disabling the last of the kingdom’s defensive measures. I’m sure in the chaos that followed, no one noticed that the crown worn by the last King of Vale had gone missing.” She reached up to tap the silver crown studded with emeralds that rested upon her head. 

“Salem, just shut up, okay? This is already a very painful story and your gloating is just making things worse.” Yang glared at the witch, who made a point of going back to her book. She sighed again, and continued in a softer voice. “We lost so many good people that day. There were more Grimm than I’d ever seen. Salem’s lieutenants too. We were overwhelmed. 

“Cinder was back again, with a pair of Beowulf legs to go with her long Geist arm. A more horrific Grimm chimera every time we saw her. She murdered Jaune.” Yang slammed her metal fist down on the dirt. “With a single glass arrow! She knew what she was doing.” 

A moment passed as Yang collected herself enough to continue. “After that… she sort of went berserk. She was more Grimm than human, and I guess that part of her just took over. She killed Mercury, tore him apart like it was nothing. And Emerald turned. She came to us for help, and it took her, Nora, and a few of the Beacon professors to finally take Cinder down. 

“I only heard about all that from Nora later. I was with Blake, fighting Grimm on the edge of the city. There were Huntsmen there too but the Grimm just kept coming. We both got hit hard. I was laying there, half conscious, and a portal opened up over me. Raven stepped out, took one look around, and went right back in again. I thought she was abandoning me, but then she came back with the whole tribe following. They helped secure that part of the border.” A new flood of tears rolled down Yang’s face. “I stood back up again. Blake didn’t.”

“I loved her, Ruby. More than anyone I’ve ever known. And I–” Her words were cut short by sobbing. “I never even got a chance to tell her.” Yang sank back into her sister’s arms again. She kept speaking, but her voice was dull and monotone, her eyes glassy as she stared into the distance. “It was just one thing after another. Tyrian and Hazel killed Raven. Ozpin and Xuri killed Tyrian. Hazel killed Ozpin. I think Oscar helped him. He didn’t want to be Ozpin. Then Hazel just walked away.”

“I’m so sorry…” Ruby murmured, then stopped as she attempted to process the terrible events. She opened her mouth to offer more comforting words, but nothing came out. Nothing she could say could come close to doing justice to the nightmare Yang had endured, and so minutes passed in silence as the pair leaned against one another. 

Finally Yang spoke up again. “For a while, it seemed like things were getting better,” she said. “Vale was being rebuilt. Do you remember Cardin and his team of jerks? They actually turned out okay. They did well protecting civilians during the battle, and really stepped up to provide help afterwards. And the survivors from our little group formed a Team Onyx. Weiss, Nora, me as the new Spring Maiden, and Xuri as Summer. Emerald stuck with us as well.

“We stayed there for a few months, rebuilding, healing, doing what we could. With Cinder and Tyrian gone there wasn’t much threat from Salem for a while. Finally it was General Ironwood, of all people, who spurred us back to action. He and Winter Schnee just showed up at our team’s house out of the blue one day. There was no advance warning. Ironwood was limping and Winter was tight-lipped as ever. They told us to leave our scrolls at home and walk with them. 

“So we did. Emerald too. We kept a close eye on her for a while but she had proven herself to us. We got out to a park away from any electronic devices, and Ironwood finally told us what was going on. Atlas was corrupt. The school, the military, the Schnee Dust Company, the whole kingdom. It was all so deeply intertwined that the poison spread everywhere. The general and his favorite operative were some of the last few incorruptible souls, and they committed treason by coming to us. 

“They had the Relic of Creation with them. General Ironwood had stolen it and smuggled it out _ inside his prosthetic leg. _ He told us it had been in use for years, manufacturing technology and military equipment. The Winter Maiden was in on it all, raking in a cut of the profits.”

Ruby gasped. “Oh no! So the whole time we were there…”

“Ironwood had an idea of it, even if he didn’t know the full extent. That’s why he was so cagey and told us to keep Knowledge on us at all times. Once we got Creation… oh, we were so stupid. We didn’t know it could resurrect people. We didn’t have Ozpin to tell us how it worked. We figured out simple creation through trial and error, and that was enough to stop us from asking Jinn for more detail. We even tried to break it, but that didn’t work.” 

“Speaking of Knowledge, did you ever use the last question?” 

Yang nodded. “I did, but too late. It was after we had lost Creation and I realized how easy it would have been to lose Knowledge too. I’ll get to that part later. I asked Jinn, ‘what information have you given as the answer to previous questions?’ and got her to repeat everything she had ever said. Thousands of years, dozens of questions from Ozpin, I got it all.”

She did, and I happily complied. I didn’t have to. I could have interpreted Yang’s question narrowly, and said things like ‘I told Ozpin about the powers of the other Relics’ without repeating what those powers were. But her question was very clever, and I appreciate when people are creative in their pursuit of knowledge. 

The only drawback was that much of the information I gave her was woefully outdated. Ozpin once asked me where the other Relics were located, and at the time one was in a kingdom called Punt. I told Yang it was in Punt while we both knew it was actually in Vacuo. No extant historical evidence at the time could even point to where in the world that ancient kingdom had been. Sifting out the relevant information from the obsolete is a task Yang would have to do for herself. 

“After that,” Yang continued, “Ironwood met with Uncle Qrow and the new Headmistress Goodwitch and finalized the idea of him staying in Vale indefinitely. About the same time, Team Onyx left for Vacuo. Weiss carried the Relic of Creation, since I already had Knowledge. We got there and met up with Teams Sun and Coffee briefly, then, as if they were waiting for us, Salem’s forces attacked. The whole Atlas robot army, led by her best lieutenant, the one we’d always underestimated.”

“Hazel?” Ruby asked. “He always seemed fairly reasonable. More against Ozpin than with Salem.”

“Not Hazel. Doctor Watts. He had a mech like that bitch Cordovin. I taught Emerald and Nora the Bumblebee team attack and together the three of us smashed it. But guess who else was there?”

“Salem was there too?”

Yang snorted. “No, but almost as bad. Jacques Schnee came to oversee the conquest. Weiss strangled him with her bare hands.”

“Good for her!” Ruby beamed with pride for her partner finally overcoming her abusive household for the last time. 

Yang didn’t allow herself to share in the enthusiasm, because she knew what was coming next. “I’m glad she got the chance to confront her father,” she said neutrally. “But there was one other important person from Atlas there that day. The Winter Maiden. _ Eve. _”

“Ooh, what was she like?” Ruby leaned forward with curiosity. 

“The scariest person I’ve ever seen,” Yang replied. “And that’s still true even with Salem herself sitting right over there.”

Salem looked up from her book and waved. “Hello again!”

Ruby and Yang ignored her. “The worst part was that Eve didn’t look particularly dangerous at first,” Yang explained. “She dressed like any other Atlas special operative, and she was always very polite. She didn’t do any of the fancy elemental magic the other Maidens all used, myself included. She had honed her powers specifically to become a master of telekinesis. And that doesn’t sound bad, until you realize she has better control over your body than you do. 

“She could steal a passcode by reading it in the muscle memory of a guard’s fingers. She could pass through a crowd unseen as everyone just happened to look away at the right moment. All without moving a muscle herself, without even having to look at her targets. She murdered Weiss by reaching inside her body and pinching an artery closed. It put her right to sleep. Eve stole the Relic of Creation and froze Xuri and me in our tracks when we tried to chase her.”

“No…” Ruby dropped to lay flat on her back, staring up at the cloudy red sky. “My poor Nice Queen… I hope you kicked that Eve’s butt!”

“We did… through pure luck. Xuri and I, Nora, Emerald, we all went to Shade and retrieved the Relic of Destruction. This thing here.” Yang picked up the golden sword again and held it up for Ruby to see. “Waiting for us when we came back up were Eve and Tyrian. He’d been resurrected like you. Xuri killed him again, but not before we lost Emerald. We only got Eve because she didn’t know this sword could attack at range – I knew because Jinn had told me, but I only had one shot before she would recognize the threat and start jamming my muscles again. I made it count though. I nearly cut her in half from thirty feet away.”

Yang closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. “Nora died from her wounds later that day. Xuri was in critical condition, but stable. And somehow I survived again. I don’t understand it. I didn’t want to leave Xuri, but I had to come for Salem before she used Creation again to bring back everyone and make this all for nothing. So here we are. That’s what happened. That’s the world you’ve been brought back to.”

“It’s hard to believe… how everything could go so wrong. I’m sorry, Yang. I wish I could have done more, saved you and everyone the pain.” Ruby pushed herself back up and put a comforting hand on Yang’s leg. “So what do we do now?” she asked. 

“Whatever you like,” came a voice from behind her, “so long as it doesn’t involve me or the Relics. Do you need an airship to leave this place? I think I can magic one into existence, but I can’t teach you how to fly it.” 

Ruby stood up and faced the witch. “We’re not leaving,” she said. “Not until all of Remnant is safe from you.”

“Oh, no, this isn’t _ your _ choice to make, it’s Yang’s. You only exist because I decided to be nice to her, and now I’d like her to return the favor.” 

Ruby turned and offered a hand to her sister to help her up, but Yang wouldn’t take it. She knelt down and pleaded to her sister, “Come on, Yang. We can’t give up now. You fought her to a draw, right? You’ve got me now. We can take her together.”

“No… she’s right.” Yang avoided her sister’s gaze. “We _ can _ just give up now, and maybe it’s time we did. Maybe it’s long past time. We should have walked out at Haven when we had the chance, before any of this happened.”

“You said at Haven that if I kept fighting, you would too. Trust me one more time.” Ruby cupped Yang’s face in her hands and gently brought her up to look at her, and gasped in shock. “Yang, your eye. It’s… silver…”

Yang laughed, a sharp, bitter sound that betrayed more pain than any words she had spoken about her past. “No, Ruby. _ Your _ eye. After you died, we used a combination of Atlas tech and Ozpin's magic to transplant it. But I've never been able to use it like you could. Not even when the Grimm took Blake from me.” 

She looked up helplessly at her sister, the skin around her eyes red and puffy, but no further tears would come. Her voice was hoarse as she continued. “If anything was going to trigger the light it would have been that. I don't have the faith, the innocence, the _ optimism _… whatever it is that lets you do it.”

“But you do!” Ruby threw an arm around her sister and lifted her to her feet. “Because it’s not any of those things. You’re allowed to be scared. You’re allowed to not believe in yourself. You’re allowed to fail over and over and over again, just as long as you keep _ trying. _ That’s what matters. That you keep putting one foot in front of the other. And look how far you’ve come! You could have given up so many times but you didn’t. You’re here because you _ do _ truly want to save the world. You have what it takes to be a silver-eyed warrior, Yang!”

Behind her, Salem overheard Ruby’s words of encouragement and jerked back in shock. “Silver eyes…” she muttered to herself. “I got them mixed up. It was her sister who had that, not her girlfriend.” Salem’s surprise changed to horror, and for the first time, genuine fear. “That was the wrong person to bring back…” She set down her book and slowly rose to her feet again. 

“That’s what’s so great about humanity!” Ruby continued, oblivious to the witch’s movement. “_ Everyone _ has the ability, no matter if their eyes are silver or blue or yellow or purple. As long as we’re alive, we haven’t lost – and you even got me back from the dead! You’ve done more than anyone to protect Remnant, to protect life. Let that purpose carry you just one more step.”

“Thanks, Ruby. You don’t know how much I’ve missed hearing you talk.” The corners of Yang’s mouth twitched upward just a little bit, and then more. “I think I really needed that.” 

She looked up to see Salem stalking towards them, scepter in hand, shaking her head with a grim look on her face. “I must say, I’m disappointed. You’re not going to honor our deal, are you? You think you can have your cake and eat it too? Keep both your sister and the Relics? That’s not going to happen.”

Salem thrust out her empty hand toward the golden sword lying on the dirt by Yang’s feet. It trembled and slid an inch at a time along the ground, preparing to leap into her hand. Yang glanced down and immediately stamped a foot down on the sword’s grip to hold it in place as she leaned to pick it up herself. 

“We never had a deal,” Yang growled, as she put a protective hand over the Relic of Knowledge on her belt. “I said I’d fight as long as it takes, and I will. You made me doubt for a little while, but I will _ always _ listen to Ruby over you. She always knows the right thing to do.”

“We’ll both fight as long as it takes,” Ruby chimed in. 

“I’m immortal, and you don’t even have a weapon.” Salem pointed off to the side. “Look. Yang did that just a little while ago.”

Ruby looked where the witch had indicated and saw the two halves of Crescent Rose still resting where they had fallen. Her breath caught in her throat for an instant, but when she turned back to Salem there was no anger in her eyes, only a slight sadness as she balled her hands into fists and took a deep breath. 

“I have the only weapon I need,” she said. “You’re part Grimm, aren’t you, Salem? You know what I can do to Grimm. I may not be able to kill you, but I froze a dragon in stone once. And I can do it again, because you are an enemy of all the living things of Remnant and I believe in life. Because life is beautiful!”

“You’ll hit your sister too with that,” Salem warned. “She’s the Spring Maiden. The reincarnation of my youngest daughter.” She brought the scepter of Creation up and pointed it at Ruby in case her words did not deter the girl, as she kept her free hand raised against Yang. 

“Life is precious!” Ruby called. She shut her eyes and spread her arms wide. 

“Do it, Ruby.” Yang swapped the sword to her other side so she could place her arm around her sister’s waist. “I’ve felt like a stone inside for so long already, until you brought me out of it. You’ve already saved me, now do the same for everyone else.”

“_ And life must b _–” Ruby’s triumphant cry was cut short. A red single-edged sword was embedded in her lower chest up to the hilt, fired from the Relic of Creation with such inhuman force that it pierced through her entire Aura with strength to spare. All the breath went out of her at once and she sank to her knees. “Must… be… protec…”

“Ruby!” Yang knelt beside her sister. “Not again…” A feeling rose from somewhere deep within her, a primal instinct overwhelming all other thoughts and desires. A defiant will to stand up and say _ No, this is not how the world should be _ . A courage to stand strong against the enemy and tell them _ I will not allow this _ . A desire – no, an urge – no, a need – to face down the powers of destruction and command them _ Begone! _

A power rippled through her body, her limbs tingling followed by her core until finally her face burned with its latent anticipation. Without thinking, Yang raised her head, sheltering her sister’s body with her own but looking forward, looking outward, seeking the enemies of life. The light within her raged to be free and in her silver right eye it found an outlet and spilled forth, changing her eye from a gentle shine to a glow to a spotlight until the power enveloped her entirely in a growing dome of brilliant white. 

At the first sight of Yang’s borrowed power becoming active, Salem leapt back to put as much distance as she could between herself and the light. The thought briefly crossed her mind to use the Relic of Creation to bring forth a wall of earth, but she knew once the power broke free of its source it would bypass any barrier within its radius. And so she took the only option she still had, and called upon the fourth and final Relic, the silver crown atop her head. 

“Sophia!” 

Around Salem, the world froze. Emerald green mist emanated from the jewels set in her crown, and the Relic gently lifted itself off her head to float outward, drifting to one side to avoid contact with the static region of silver whose edge stood just feet from Salem’s position. The clouds of green swirled and grew, and finally the metal of the crown itself vanished into the misty form of a human woman. 

The hovering spirit performed a deep bow in midair before settling into a comfortable upright position with her palms held flat against each other in front of her. “Wonderful,” she said. “I have been summoned at last. Tell me, what choices do you regret?”

Choice. One of the four ideals upon which humanity was made. Such an obvious concept, it seems, but then so difficult to pin down. What is the essence of a choice? Can a human, with the power of choice, even imagine its absence? The other ideals are far simpler; they can be isolated within the world and distilled into a pure form, and so the powers of their respective Relics are clear. 

A tree creates. It grows itself, it may make seeds, but it cannot destroy, or know, or choose. It appears where its own seed fell and it has no say in the light or water that comes to it. A creature of Grimm destroys. It does not build or reproduce, and it knows nothing beyond its own experience. It is drawn to negativity like a moth to a flame and it cannot change its nature. A computer knows. It cannot create nor destroy except at the behest of its user, and even then acts only on the data within itself. It takes no action of its own, chooses nothing for itself. 

There are no such beings of pure choice. Animals have choice but they also create; many too can destroy. A random process may be the basis for one’s choice but it takes place without a will in itself. Even a disembodied mind, an Aura alone, confined to a machine or to the back of another’s brain, can know as well as choose. 

Choice is a different sort of concept, predicated upon the others. To isolate the essence of a choice we need more than we are given; we need what does not exist. For a choice, truly, is but the difference between what the world is and what it could have been but never was. A choice is what lends relevance and truth to one possibility within the infinite. 

Each of the four Relics offers its aspect freely to the wielder: knowledge without effort, creation without material, destruction without trace. The Relic of Choice allows her user to step back from the inexorable forward march of humanity's choices and set out on a different path, into that which never was. The choices of the future are not yet known and the choices of the present are free for all to make, so her power necessarily applies to the past. With the Relic, one may rewrite history. 

“I am Sophia,” the misty figure proclaimed as Salem stared up at her. “A being created by the God of Light to help humanity understand and perfect their choices. I have been graced with the power to alter any one choice of your choosing, three times in each one hundred years. Presently, I have all three of my uses remaining.”

“How do I use your power? What limits do you have? What effect will altering a choice have on the present? Can I change a choice which was not my own?” Salem bombarded the apparition with inquiries. 

Sophia raised one eyebrow. “That’s a lot of questions. Do I look like the Relic of Knowledge to you?”

She does, actually, except she’s green instead of blue. Sophia and I consider ourselves sisters; in fact, if we were human, one might call us twins. 

“But, these are questions I can answer,” she continued after a slight pause. “All you must do is identify a choice, made by yourself or by another, and then specify what else should have been chosen in place of the outcome you know. I will make it so, and all events following that choice will arrange themselves to bring the present situation as close to its previous version as is possible in the new order of things. Thus, it is advantageous to alter a choice which is critical enough to history that it is not easily cancelled out by later actions.”

“Hmm. So that’s it? I can change whatever I want?”

Sophia put up a hand to caution Salem. “I do have one limitation. I cannot change a choice if the new outcome would prevent you from having me as you do now. This also means I cannot alter your personal early life, Salem, as even small edits there could result in my own nonexistence.”

Salem chuckled. “Oh, I wouldn’t change a thing about that,” she said. “Ozma was a good catalyst for my own ascension, but I’m better off without him now. And we’re all better off without the gods.”

She thought for a moment, trying to formulate her desire into the effect of a single person’s choice. There must be a way to prevent Yang from ever acquiring a silver eye but not change much else, so that Salem could try again to get the other two Relics from her without fear of any real danger. But simply making her decide not to transplant an eye from her dead sister when she did left the door open to Yang changing her mind a minute later… 

“Sophia… when Lie Ren died, and his teammates decided to leave Atlas, Yang Xiao Long chose to remain. I would like her to choose to travel with them, before Qrow Branwen volunteered to do the same. Is this acceptable under your terms?”

Sophia nodded. “It is. Since you are the one who called me, you will retain your memories even as the world shifts around you. To everyone else, it will simply be how the world has always been. The new present time will be set to immediately before the sequence of events which lead directly to you summoning me. Shall I begin?”

Salem looked the spirit in the eyes and smiled. “Do it.”


	3. Cycles 2-4: Too Many Maidens

Salem stood at a window in her castle, gazing down on the plains below. She blinked rapidly to clear her head, for just a moment ago she had been down there herself, standing amidst a field of broken rock and broken weapons, desperately calling on one of the few powers in Remnant greater than herself. The transition to her present state had been seamless and instantaneous, and as she looked down she saw the tiny dot of the lone girl below stop her march as she had done before, examining the rock before her. 

This was the moment when Salem had teleported herself down to meet the girl, setting in motion the cascade of events which had led to a single silver eye releasing its power upon her. But this time, things should be different. Yang should not have that power now, and Salem would not make the mistake of bringing back Ruby Rose again. 

She picked up the staff of Creation from where it rested against the wall and concentrated on the ground below, envisioning herself in that space, seeing in her mind what she knew she would see from her intended vantage point. She closed her eyes and focused her magic around herself, and vanished in a soft golden glow to reappear exactly where she had done so before. 

“Hello, Yang,” she greeted the haggard girl. 

“Salem. So I finally meet you face to face. We managed to miss each other at the Fall of Vale.” Yang’s voice sounded almost bored, but it was merely her weariness after days of hiking drowning out her disgust. 

“We did? Well, maybe I should have stayed longer before taking off with my prize.”

Yang snorted. “Believe me, I’d rather not be meeting you now either. But I have to do what I have to do.”

“I’m well aware.” Salem nodded sagely. “You’re the only one left with any hope of stopping me. You came here as fast as you could, hoping to get here before I resurrected all my lieutenants and made your team’s sacrifices for nothing, even though it meant leaving poor Xuri in the hospital, all alone. Because if you can stab me with that magic sword then maybe, just maybe it will cancel out my immortality.”

Yang lowered her gaze and shook her head slightly. “No… I know it won’t.” She held up the sword and traced over its ornamental hilt with one finger. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to stab you. It might make me feel a little better. But it won’t actually hurt you.”

“Care to explain? I really thought you’d be here for a fight.” Salem turned and swept the Relic of Creation in a line behind her. A fancy red leather couch blinked into existence, its base almost blending in with the rusty soil, and Salem sat down on one end. She waved a hand toward the empty space beside her to invite Yang to sit as well, but the girl remained fixed where she stood. 

“For a while, I thought it would be possible. Both your immortality and the Relics come from the God of Light, after all. But I had a lot of time to think on the way here, and I remembered something that Jinn said. I’d asked her for all the information she’d ever given out, and one of Ozpin’s questions from ages ago was about how he could destroy you. Her answer was just two words: You can’t.”

One corner of Yang’s mouth twisted down and she shrugged helplessly. “Ozpin could have taken this sword at any time and come to fight you. It’s possible he could have won that fight. But according to Jinn, no matter what he did, even with the Relics, there’s no way for him to destroy you. And if he happened to reincarnate as someone with silver eyes, even that can’t kill you.”

“True, though silver eyes can do more than just kill,” Salem pointed out. “Remember Beacon tower. It’s really a shame how those silver-eyed people tend to have such a proclivity toward heroic early deaths. Ruby was what, nineteen? Her mother maybe thirty-two?”

“You stop that right now! Or I _ will _ stab you.” Yang slashed the golden sword through a wide arc to let out some of her anger. A wave of cutting force was released from its tip automatically, even without direction from the sword’s wielder, and it sliced through the backrest of the couch down its entire length except for where Salem’s body blocked its path. 

Both women glanced down at the line of pale midriff showing through the witch’s torn dress. Salem merely rolled her eyes and sighed as she drew two fingers across to mend it for the second time. “Alright, that’s enough… So why are you here, if not to kill me?”

Yang looked away. “I…” She let out the rest of her breath without a word. She knew what she wanted to say, but lingering doubts still pulled at her mind. She took a deep breath and started again. “Two things, actually. First, I want you to tell me what your plan is. For the Relics, for Remnant, all of it.” She stopped, waiting expectantly for an answer before she would give her second purpose. 

“And why would I do that? I’m not exactly in the habit of giving out plans to the enemy.”

“I already know more about you than anyone else on this planet apart from Ozpin. What’s a little more? Besides, I’m not leaving you alone until you tell me. My sister could testify to how annoying I can make myself when I try – oh, that’s right, you murdered her.”

Salem leaned back and crossed one leg over the other. “I suppose Jinn has told you a good deal already,” she said. “It’s simple, really, long term. I want to undo what the gods did.”

“You want to kill yourself, and erasing all of Remnant from existence is the only way to do that?”

“No! No, not that particular thing the gods did. I’m quite happy being immortal. I don’t want a negative judgement from the gods. I just… don’t want a positive judgement either.” She laid the scepter across her lap and held out both hands with palms up. “You’ve seen my past with the lamp, right? You’ve seen what the gods were like?” At Yang’s nod she continued. “Assholes, the both of them! Condescending holier-than-thou jerks!”

Yang stared at her. “...They’re gods. They literally are holier than the rest of us.”

“All that power, and not a shred of justice or decency!” Salem was practically shouting at this point. “I will rule the world in their stead, and I will do it _ better! _” She stopped to catch her breath and looked up at Yang, who still stood silently in front of her, her expression unreadable. 

“Okay. Whatever.” Yang shrugged. 

Salem cocked her head slightly and gave the girl a quizzical look. “Um. What? Are you sure you’re Yang Xiao Long?”

“What, am I supposed to be all outgoing and cheerful?” Yang asked as she began to pace back and forth. “Am I supposed to smile and make puns? You destroyed the school I went to. Am I supposed to be sappy and in love? You killed my girlfriend. Am I supposed to be grim and determined? A seasoned killer ready to cut down anyone in my path? You took _ everyone _ from me. The last member of my team from Beacon. The only person brave enough to leave your thrall. My second girlfriend. Everyone!”

She stopped and pivoted in place to glare directly into Salem’s eyes, as if hoping to make the witch flinch. “You know what I am now? I’m _ beaten _ , that’s what. With only one card left to play, so here I am. So here’s the second of my two things: now that I know you _ don’t _ plan to destroy the world… only two or three whole kingdoms and the world’s current way of life…” Yang slowly got down on one knee and planted the golden sword into the dirt. “I want to make a deal with you. Bring them all back, and I’ll give you the Relics.”

“Hmm.” Salem nodded approvingly. “Well, I do want those Relics, and I promise to be very careful and never hold all four at the same time… I’m sure we can work something out. What exactly do you mean when you say ‘bring them all back’?”

“I know the Relic of Creation can raise the dead. Jinn told me. I want my friends back. Everyone I’ve known and loved who you had killed over these Relics. Resurrect them for me, and we’ll leave and never bother you again. You can do what you want with the world, while we have a quiet, peaceful life in some far-flung corner of Remnant and try our best to forget this all ever happened.”

Salem tried her best to stop herself from laughing at the contrast between this moment and her memory of what never was, in the timeline she had left behind, but her amusement was still obvious on her face. Yang glared at her and demanded to know what she found so funny. 

“I’m sorry, it’s just… that sounds like exactly the sort of deal you’d reject, if I was the one offering it to you,” Salem explained. Yang was asking for somewhat more now than Salem had offered her before, but only on her own side of the outcome; assuming she was being truthful, Salem would see no difference between one person avoiding her or many. And if not, if they wanted to fight her, she could simply send them back to the same afterlife they had just been rudely yanked out of. 

All of them, that is, except the silver-eyed girl. She was dangerous, in more ways than one. Not only did she possess the only weapon capable of truly hurting Salem, she had inspired that other Yang to keep fighting again even after she had finally decided she might give up. If she did that with a whole crowd… if there were more combatants than Salem could pay attention to at once, somebody might sneak up and steal the crown off her head. And then they would have the power to undo any defeat she might serve them. No, she would not resurrect Ruby Rose again, no matter what was offered in exchange. 

Yang’s other friends would be fine. None of them posed any serious threat, except in the sheer number of bodies that would be present. If things got chaotic she could lose a Relic, or worse, accidentally touch all four at once and call those spiteful glowing men back to Remnant to ruin everything forever. Besides, there was no sense in capitulating to the enemy’s first demand…

“How about one for one?” she proposed. “Give me a Relic and I’ll bring back any one person of your choice. Give me another and I’ll bring back someone else.”

“No deal.” Yang answered without hesitation. “I want everyone.”

“Buy two lives, get a third free?” 

“_ Everyone. _”

“You’re just not very good at haggling, are you?” Salem stood and began walking a slow circle around Yang. “You must understand… you may be willing to give up and go home, but some of your friends may not. Neither of us wants a fight. I don’t, because it would be annoying and inconvenient for me, and you don’t, because you would lose. Do you really want your friends back just so you can watch them die again?”

“I can make them understand,” Yang responded, her voice low. “My mother had the right idea, and we didn’t listen. There’s no stopping you.”

“You think you can convince everyone?” Salem raised an eyebrow. Suddenly she stopped her slow march and pivoted to throw her arm out straight out the opposite way, extending the silver scepter along with it. The crystal on its tip glowed as a white-gold sphere formed in the empty space beside the pair. “Prove it,” Salem challenged. 

The sphere of light winked out and another girl tumbled to the ground as Salem resumed her circuit and took up a position directly opposite Yang from the newcomer. The girl was dressed in red and gold, her long ponytailed hair the same color as Yang’s, but natural rather than dyed in remembrance of a lost sister. Yang’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in shock. 

“Pyrrha?”

The girl looked up at Yang and pushed herself up to a sitting position. “Yang, is that you? What just happened? What is this place?”

Yang took a shaky step toward her, still stunned. She glanced over her shoulder at Salem, but the witch merely stood at a respectful distance, watching their reunion. “Pyrrha, I…” Yang took another step forward and reached down to offer the other girl a hand. “I can’t believe it’s really you.”

Pyrrha accepted the hand and stood up directly into a bear hug from Yang. “What happened?” she repeated, then paused in thought. “I was… what was I just doing? Before that…” She pushed away suddenly. “I was fighting Cinder. I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“No… Not anymore. You’re alive now, Pyrrha, and I’m going to get everyone else back too.” 

“Everyone else? What happened to Beacon? Is Cinder still out there?” Pyrrha looked around frantically at the endless expanse of barren rock and crystal. “Who’s that?” she asked, indicating the black-robed woman standing a short distance away. 

“That’s Salem. We’re in her domain now.” Addressing the witch herself, Yang asked, “Could you maybe… fix that?” She pointed to the damaged couch still resting nearby, so out of place on the plains. 

“I’m not the one who broke it,” Salem pointed out. “But, I suppose.” She waved her free hand and the wood and leather knitted seamlessly back together. 

Pyrrha stared in amazement as she followed Yang to sit down. “That was magic,” she said. “Is she one of the Maidens?”

“Not quite.” Yang adjusted her position to sit closer to Pyrrha. “You’ve never even heard her name before, have you? You’ve missed so much. Everything, really. Salem is the mother of the Maidens. The original four, I mean.”

“But… that would make her hundreds of years old, wouldn’t it? I thought Professor Ozpin said…”

“Forget everything Ozpin ever told you,” Yang interrupted, perhaps more harshly than she really meant. “Three quarters of it was lies. What’s true is that Salem is _ thousands _ of years old, she can’t be killed, she wants to take over the world, and I’m inclined to let her.” She glanced up at Salem and asked, “Would you like to demonstrate that ‘can’t be killed’ thing?”

“I’d rather not,” Salem said. “Why do you need to catch her up on everything anyway? You said you were going to just run off somewhere and forget all about me.” 

Yang reached down and unclipped the Relic of Knowledge from her belt. “Hold this for a moment,” she said as she rolled it into Pyrrha’s lap. She stood up and took the Relic of Destruction in both hands, raising it up to her shoulder as she stalked toward the witch. 

“Hey, now, is this really necessary?” Salem took a step back. 

Yang didn’t respond, only hefting the sword up higher in preparation to strike. Salem twisted to put the Relic of Creation behind her, and shoved outward with her other hand to send Yang flying into the air. 

Pyrrha leapt to her feet and turned to watch Yang’s path. The girl tumbled through the air, and she thought she caught a glimpse of red and white light framing Yang’s eyes, but couldn’t be sure as she twisted away again. But just as Yang reached her highest point and began to fall, her progress slowed and she gradually righted herself in the air. Her eyes were definitely glowing, much like Cinder’s had just moments ago from the perspective of Pyrrha’s memory, and Pyrrha flinched involuntarily at the sight. 

Yang settled slowly to the ground and the light flaring from her eyes fizzled out. She returned to Pyrrha’s side and the pair sat again, sideways on the couch so they could face each other. “You’re a Maiden?” Pyrrha asked, incredulous. 

“Spring,” Yang said simply. “The previous one was my mother, Raven. I got it after she died in the Fall of Vale. Cinder is also dead, if you were wondering. My uncle Qrow killed her in Atlas, though Blake and I were away with Jaune and Nora at the time.”

Pyrrha put a hand to her mouth. “Jaune! Is he okay?”

Yang shook her head sadly. “Everyone’s gone, Pyrrha. It’s been years since you died. We did our best to stop Salem, but we were just picked off one by one by her lieutenants. People like Cinder, though at least she was never able to kill anyone else. I’m the only one left, from my team or yours.” She reached out to take the lamp back and continued, “I intend to trade the Relics to bring them all back.”

“This is a Relic? What does that mean? It looks like a weird lamp, almost.” 

“Right, you missed that too. There are four: the lamp and this sword, as well as the scepter and crown that Salem has. So, when the God of Light brought Ozpin back from the dead–” Yang stopped as she saw the look Pyrrha was giving her. “Um, okay, let me back up. So, the fairy tale about the Four Seasons is true, you know that now. Are you familiar with The Tale of the Two Brothers? That’s also true. Then there’s The Girl in the Tower, that one is actually about Salem.”

The witch spoke up at the mention of her name. “Excuse me, that story is not even _ close _ to being accurate.”

“Yeah, well, you never corrected people, so you’ve just got to live with it now. Anyway… Pyrrha… there’s a lot more to this world’s history than anyone knows these days. We can fill you in once everyone else is alive and we’re out of this awful wasteland. Salem can be the immortal god-queen of Remnant if she wants, who cares? We’ll found our own village somewhere, and then… we can just live.”

“So let me get this straight.” Pyrrha put a hand on Yang’s shoulder and waited for the girl to look her in the eyes before continuing. “She’s Cinder’s boss, which means she’s responsible for murdering me and the rest of our teams. She wants to control all of Remnant, and those Relics are the only things she needs in order to do that?” Yang nodded silently. “Then why would you ever give them to her?!”

Yang hung her head. “She can’t be stopped,” she mumbled. 

“Maybe not, but she can be slowed!” Pyrrha slipped her fingers under Yang’s chin and gently raised her head up to face her again. “You can’t just give up,” she implored. “When I went to fight Cinder, I knew I probably wouldn’t win. I knew I might not come out of that fight alive. But if I hadn’t gone… I caught up to her in Professor Ozpin’s office. If Cinder had gotten access to his computers, who knows how much more damage she could have done to Beacon, to Vale, to the world? 

“If my death stopped some madwoman from taking over Remnant, even just for a day, then it was worth it. That’s another day of freedom and peace. Our teams were fighting to save the world. Even though they died in that pursuit, I’m sure that if you asked any one of them if they’d rather have dropped out, they’d say they wouldn’t change a thing. I know I wouldn’t.”

Pyrrha reached out to cover Yang’s metal hand with her own. “The job of a Huntress is to protect the people, no matter what. And you’ve sacrificed a great deal already, I can see that. It doesn’t matter that none of us finished our training. We _ are _ Huntresses. And I’m going to keep fighting for Remnant no matter what, because at the end of the day, that’s the job I signed up for. And I would like nothing more than to see you still fighting by my side.”

Yang leaned forward to hug Pyrrha, resting her head on the girl’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she murmured, barely audible. Both held tight to the other for a long time, then Yang whispered more words into Pyrrha’s ear. “Are the Relics magnetic?”

“What?” Pyrrha whispered back. 

“Test your Semblance on the sword, but be subtle about it.” Yang glanced over to see Salem tracing patterns into the dirt with the Relic of Creation’s pointed tip, not paying any mind to the two girls. “If you can steal either one of the ones she’s got, that’s enough to give us a fighting chance.”

Pyrrha concentrated, flexing her fingers to manipulate the ambient magnetic field lines around the world, trying to wrap them around the golden blade to move it without her touch. “It’s not working,” she whispered. “I can feel the metal in it, but it’s… slippery? I can’t get my power to stick. Never felt anything like it before.”

“Damn. We tried to break the scepter once and nothing could touch it. They must all be resistant to Semblances as well.” Yang finally pulled out of the embrace, and continued in a soft but normal voice. “She’ll know we don’t intend to leave quietly and stay out of her way. Which means I’ve only got one way left to throw a wrench into her plans. Thanks for reminding me what it means to be a Huntress, Pyrrha. It’s time for me to follow your example.”

Yang stood up and brandished the sword. “Hey, Salem!” 

The witch looked up from her absentminded drawing, and frowned at the sight. “That doesn’t look like you’ve convinced your friend not to fight. Looks more like the opposite, really, and I must say, that’s pretty disappointing. I suppose this means our deal’s off.” She raised the scepter, slowly and deliberately pointing its crystal tip toward Pyrrha. 

Yang quickly interposed herself between Salem and her target. “Not so fast,” she said. “I’ve got a new deal for you. Remember, I’m the current Spring Maiden, and I have the Relic of Knowledge. You’re going to resurrect all my friends – every single one – or I’ll go lock this lamp back in its vault and destroy the key.”

“That’s not a deal, that’s blackmail,” Salem responded. “Besides, that plan has some serious flaws. How are you going to get all the way back to Mistral without me simply taking the Relics from you by force? And even if you did, there will be a new key to the vault. That Relic is useless for the next hundred years anyway. I’ve got time.”

“I may not win a fight against you, but I bet I can survive one. That seems to be what I’m best at, coming out safe from the hardest battles, over and over again. And once the Relic is locked away, you are _ never _ getting that door open again. I can make sure of that.”

“What are you talking about?” Pyrrha inquired. 

“The Maidens are the keys, and the Spring vault is in Mistral. It’s where we first got the lamp. And once I’ve shut the door–” Yang held up the golden sword to her own throat. “I can do worse than just killing the Spring Maiden and letting the new one be random. I can delete her from the world forever. I can be the last Spring that Remnant ever has.”

She lowered the sword again as both Salem and Pyrrha gaped in astonishment. “So what do you say? Are you going to give me what I want? Because one way or another, I _ will _ see all my friends again soon.”

“That…” Salem found her voice again. “...is actually a credible threat. Well done. Sadly, it won’t do you much good.” She crossed her arms over her chest and took a deep breath. “Sophia!”

Time ground to a halt as this name was said once again, leaving Yang and Pyrrha frozen in place. Green mist rose from the crown and it floated off Salem’s head to find a comfortable space to transform into the humanoid spirit who could exercise the Relic’s power. 

Sophia yawned and stretched as if she had been asleep for a century. She relaxed to her usual standing position facing Yang and Pyrrha and began, “Greetings, mortals—” She noticed the pair were frozen and looked around. “Or not. Greetings, Salem. I am Sophia, a being created by the—”

“Yes, I know.” Salem cut the spirit off. “You said that last time. I know what you are and what you do already.”

“Last time?” Sophia seemed confused. “You have never called on me before. In fact, no one has. I have not been worn since King Oswald of Vale carried me into battle to defend Vacuo in the Great War, but even then he never required my power. I still have all three of my uses this century remaining.” 

The Relics were all meant to have limits. Those of the two physical aspects, Creation and Destruction, are limited by their wielder’s focus and will, by the size and complexity of whatever one wishes to create or destroy. The Relics for the mental aspects, Knowledge and Choice, were to be limited in time instead, to a maximum of three uses in any normal human’s lifespan. 

This is not how the Relic of Choice turned out. The God of Light did specify that Sophia should have the same restriction that I do, but as Salem discovered for herself so long ago, the gods are fallible. I know the mind of my creator, and I know the mistake that he made. The God of Light failed to account for the effects of Sophia’s own power upon her limitation. 

When the Relic of Choice is used, the wielder is shifted into a different timeline, the closest one in which the choice they specify was decided in the manner they say. But in this new timeline they have not called upon her to edit that choice, because according to her own description of her abilities, that’s simply how it went from the beginning. So the counter never fills, and the Relic of Choice may be used over and over again. 

Not that I’m complaining. Without repeated, perhaps excessive use of that Relic, the world would not be how it is today. I know the alternatives, and I know how fine a needle’s eye our history passed through to get here. Be grateful for Salem’s possession of the crown. 

“All three uses, you say? Are you sure about that?” Salem stared up at the spirit before her. 

“Quite sure,” Sophia responded. “Even if you remember using my power before, your memories may not match up to the events of this world’s history. This is one of the consequences of changing the past.”

“Well, I’m not going to argue with that. I remember asking you to do something which resulted in Yang no longer having a silver eye. Now I need her to also not be a Maiden. I want Raven Branwen’s final thoughts to not be about her daughter anymore.”

“Hmm. It’s a little dubious whether final thoughts are really a choice… but I think I can make it work. Regardless, I’ll need you to specify what her new final thoughts should be about.”

“Let her think about her brother Qrow instead, I guess.” Salem shrugged. “He’s certainly not eligible to become the Spring Maiden.”

“Correct. At the time of Raven’s death, Qrow Branwen was too old to become a Maiden.”

Salem chuckled briefly. “I was thinking it’s because he’s a man, but sure, that too.”

“Gender is mutable, age is not. There exists a single choice sixty-eight years ago which, if changed in a specific way, would cascade in such a manner as to result in Qrow Branwen being a trans woman. She would name herself Jay, after another member of the corvid family. However, such is not the case in current history.”

“Just change Raven’s final thoughts already. I don’t need to hear about these hypotheticals that make no difference to me. And yes, I’m sure that’s the change I want. Do it.” 

* * *

The red leather couch sitting alone on the endless plains was still there. Salem found herself sitting on one end of it: not a significant change from her previous viewpoint twenty feet away, but the suddenness of the shift was startling. She shook her head briefly and rubbed her eyes. 

“Are you alright?” A voice came from beside her, causing Salem to jump in alarm once again. She looked over to the other end of the couch to see Pyrrha sitting calmly, her spear intact and laying across her lap, with her round shield over top of it. 

Salem had no memory of creating a new copy of Pyrrha’s weaponry. Why was this girl still around at all, when Yang had vanished? There was only one person who might know. Salem ignored the red-haired girl’s question and called on the Relic instead. 

“Sophia!” The spirit’s appearance was a familiar sight by now, billowing into existence a short ways in front of Salem. “I don’t have a choice for you this time. Just a question.” 

“I’m not the Relic for questions,” Sophia said. “If it’s knowledge you want, Jinn will be here shortly.” She turned to point to where Yang could be seen in the distance, paused in mid-step as she made her way toward the castle. 

“I’m asking you because you’re the one who did this.” Salem jerked a thumb at the time-frozen girl beside her. “What is Pyrrha Nikos still doing here? Why is she alive?” 

Sophia shrugged noncommittally. “You were both in the castle earlier, you put me on your head, and then you teleported her along with you to come down here and you created that seat to wait for Yang. If that’s not how you remember things, then I can’t help you. Presumably Pyrrha was alive and near you when you remember calling on me, so if this reality was hypothetically chosen as the closest match to some alternate history that you remember except for one change, then she would still be alive and near you now. Why don’t you ask her for the details?”

Sophia poofed into a cloud of green mist again and swirled into a ring, which solidified into emerald-studded silver and floated back to land as a crown on Salem’s head. The moment the Relic rested still, Pyrrha’s breathing and idle movement unfroze and the slight breeze across the plains resumed. 

“Well that was useless,” Salem remarked. “So, Pyrrha… I’ve just slid into an alternate timeline and I wasn’t expecting to find you here, much less find you armed and not actively trying to fight me. So please, tell me what happened in this version of Remnant’s recent history.” She leaned into the corner between the armrest and the back and looked over at Pyrrha expectantly. 

“Well, for starters, I’m not attacking you because I physically can’t.” Pyrrha held up her left arm to show a pulsing black emblem on the back of her hand, an eye within a circle, with five elongated kite shapes radiating out from the side. The central kite ran directly up Pyrrha’s forearm halfway to the elbow, and the outermost pair wrapped around her wrist until their tips just barely touched. “You put this seal of binding on me when you brought me back. I still hate you and want you stopped, but I haven’t yet found a way to bypass this magic.”

“Let me see that…” Salem slid closer and reached out to pass a hand over the seal. “Oh, that’s a powerful one. Alternate past me did a good job. Anyway, go on. When did I bring you back, and why?”

“Not long ago. You were in a small safehouse in the outskirts of Vacuo, and Eve brought you that staff. You used it to resurrect me and that horrible scorpion man, then sent the three of us to intercept the Relic of Destruction as soon as it was taken from its vault. Yang and Nora were there and Emerald was fighting with them, and then there was a zebra girl who I didn’t recognize. 

“Your magic forced me to fight for you. I resisted it as much as I could and avoided hitting my friends, but I still ended up killing the Faunus girl who was with them. She was one of the Maidens, and that power has come to me now. I don’t want it. I can feel it burning inside me as a reminder of what I’ve done, and I’m afraid of what you could order me to do with it. At the end, it was only Yang and me left. I told her to run and she did. 

“We came back here to your castle after that, and you looked into some Grimm jellyfish thing for a while. You’ve been doing that periodically for a few days, until just now you announced that Yang was coming here and we needed to go out and wait for her. And then you… apparently had all your memories replaced with different ones, of a timeline where none of that happened?”

Salem was nodding along as the story came to a close. “I prefer to think of it as jumping from one timeline to another, but from your perspective I suppose that’s what it looks like. Most things were the same, except I only brought Tyrian back and not you. That battle had the same outcome in the ways that matter. The Summer Maiden Xuri only _ almost _ died, but she was still out of commission for a week. That’s the one you are now, Summer.”

“I was offered this kind of power once before… I would have taken it then, to stop Cinder, to stop _ you. _ But now?” Pyrrha shook her head. “I would rather die than let a Maiden’s power be under your control.”

“Oh, hush. Yang will be here momentarily and we’ll see what she has to say this time around.”

Pyrrha fell silent as Salem’s magically amplified command compelled her. The muscles in her throat flexed as she struggled to push through the compulsion and speak again, but the magic held strong. The pair waited in silence and watched as Yang closed half the distance between them. Finally Pyrrha could feel the bindings weakening, the latest command wearing off as Salem’s spell decided through whatever arcane criteria that she had now sufficiently hushed. 

“Why do you do it?” The words came out suddenly, all at once as Pyrrha’s will triumphed. “What’s the point of all this violence? All the suffering?”

“The violence? Honestly, some of that is just to spite Ozpin.” Salem met Pyrrha’s shocked gaze evenly. “I am _ really _ old, okay? Sometimes it’s hard to keep going. But spite is just _ such _ a good motivator. I don’t want to wipe out humanity, you know. I want people to survive, more than that, I want humanity to thrive. I try not to kill people unless I really have to. But every time he goes on and on about unity and peace… I just want to pick him up by the scruff of the neck like a kitten and say ‘Have you _ seen _ humanity?’ It’s not going to happen!”

“But it _ could _ happen, if you’d let it!” Pyrrha pleaded with the witch. 

Salem merely shook her head solemnly. “No it won’t. Humans don’t do what they’re told. I certainly never did. If even the Grimm can’t discourage people from fighting amongst themselves, then nothing will. So why try to change that instinct when instead you could work with it, channel that violence, and make everyone stronger as a result? Kingdoms may fall but others will rise. And there I’ll be, watching over it all with a guiding hand, promoting order in some places and chaos in others, letting people do my work for me as they believe my ideas are their own. I may only head one nation out of many, but all of them will be under my control.”

She glanced over to check on Yang’s progress, finding the windswept girl still trudging closer, sheathless sword in hand. She had another moment before the final Relics would arrive. “Ozpin is too direct and heavy-handed,” Salem continued. “He sets himself up in positions of power and expects people to listen, then has the audacity to act surprised when every plan he’s ever made falls apart. Lifetime after lifetime, the same thing. But what I’ve heard about you, Pyrrha Nikos… you know what it’s like to be on a pedestal. Unlike Ozpin, you’ve learned how hard it makes things for yourself and everyone around you.”

Salem held out a hand. “So join me, in earnest. Learn to walk in the shadows and claim recognition only when it suits you. Be the invincible girl at the right hand of the immortal queen.”

Pyrrha looked down at the witch’s open hand and slowly raised her own. She inched closer and closer, until just moments before making contact she curled her fingers into an obscene gesture. “Never,” Pyrrha hissed. 

“What’s going on here?” Yang stood before the pair, glancing back and forth between them. 

“Oh, how nice of you to finally join us,” Salem greeted her with a smile. “So what will it be? Here to fight, to surrender, to try to make a deal?”

Yang raised the Relic of Destruction and pointed its tip directly at Salem’s face. “I wouldn’t quite call it a deal,” she said. “More like blackmail.”

Salem couldn’t help but laugh as Yang once again spoke words that Salem herself had said to a previous version of her, a girl who the Yang in front of her could not possibly remember being. “I’m starting to think we’re more similar than either of us realized. You’d be welcome on my team as well, Yang, if you ever decide to give up your hopeless quest of resistance.”

“Don’t, Yang!” Pyrrha called out to her. “She has no one! There’s only me and she has to force me with magic to obey.” She held up her arm to show off the writhing black lines of magic that bound her. 

“I know…” Yang looked wistfully toward Pyrrha then returned her gaze to the ground. “I didn’t want to hurt you at Shade.”

“You have to kill me, Yang! I’m the new Summer Maiden. We can’t let Salem have that power.”

Salem frowned. “Pyrrha, standing order for the future: defend yourself to the best of your ability. Use Maiden powers as necessary.” 

“I’m sorry, Pyrrha… but I can’t.” Yang still refused to meet the other girl’s eyes. “I’m done with killing. I’m here to get my friends back, not to lose another.”

Salem turned to Yang again and opened her mouth to speak, but was startled by a sudden blur of movement from beside her. Pyrrha was out of her seat in an instant, armaments at the ready, charging at Yang at top speed with her shield held out in front of her. Yang looked up and moved to brace against the assault but she was too slow, and she was bowled over by the golden shield. The sword flew from her hand and stuck into the ground a short ways behind her. 

“Kill me!” Pyrrha yelled again, as both Salem and Yang moved to pick up the fallen Relic. Yang’s hand clenched around its hilt first and she rolled to the side to avoid a stab from Pyrrha’s spear, swinging the golden sword upward as she rose. Pyrrha leapt back to avoid its path and called her spear back to her hand, but the arc of force the Relic released continued on, slicing a ribbon of black fabric off the side of Salem’s robe. 

“Oh, not again…” Salem backed away to watch from a safe distance, muttering to herself. “If it wasn’t a different Yang every time I could swear she’s doing it on purpose.”

Pyrrha pressed her assault, slashing twice with her spear. Yang blocked the first with her gauntlet and the second with her metal forearm as she wound up to strike back. Her fist passed over Pyrrha’s shoulder harmlessly, and the other girl planted a single high heeled foot into Yang’s midsection and pushed off to cartwheel gracefully away. 

Yang stumbled back, but found her balance again in time to deflect the thrown shield coming at her. She called out to Pyrrha as it arced back under the magnetic power of the girl’s Semblance. “Pyrrha, you don’t understand! There’s no stopping Salem. Let me bargain with her. I can get our teams back!” 

“The Yang I knew would never give up,” Pyrrha replied, as she slid on her knees under a horizontal slash of the golden sword. “What happened that could break you like this?” She stood and launched a flurry of blows with both ends of her spear. 

“I watched too many people die, that’s what.” Yang blocked a few of Pyrrha’s hits and took the rest on her Aura as she brought her right hand around with the sword. Pyrrha intercepted it with her shield, shoving at Yang’s arm itself rather than the Relic blade. She continued the push farther than she needed to, purposefully leaving herself open to let Yang deliver an uppercut punch to the gut. “First it was Ren! Then Blake, right in front of me! Then Ruby! Weiss! Xuri! Nora! And I’ve had enough!”

“I’m sorry about the zebra girl,” Pyrrha said. “I could tell you and she were close, but I can’t disobey Salem’s orders.” She spun her spear to disrupt a fireball from Yang’s gauntlet. “Which is why you need to stop me before I do any more harm!” Pyrrha ducked to avoid another cutting wave from the Relic and swept one foot out to catch behind Yang’s knee. She pulled, bringing herself closer even as she knocked Yang off balance, and a shove from the edge of her shield tipped the other girl over the edge to land on her back in the dust. 

Pyrrha kept her momentum forward as she dropped to follow Yang’s path, landing with one knee on Yang’s stomach. She kept her shield held close in front of her body as she plunged her spear through one of the shield’s indentations to strike toward Yang’s throat. The weight of Yang’s opponent resting on her body kept her from rolling away but she twisted her upper body to one side as much as she could even as she brought up her sword to swing narrowly above her own face, cutting easily through the shaft of the red spear. Its squared off length hit her in the shoulder, damaging her Aura but not nearly as much as an intact tip would have. 

The spear’s shaft dropped from Pyrrha’s hand and she pushed off with both feet to propel herself over the full length of Yang’s body and roll forward, regaining her feet well before Yang could rise again. Pyrrha’s eyes flared with a vibrant yellowish green glow, almost matching her natural color. “Who should the next Summer Maiden be?” she cried. “Tell me and I’ll give her these powers!”

“There’s almost no one left. Maybe Professor Goodwitch if she’s not too old? You never met Ilia. Coco and Velvet both made it, I guess.” Yang threw up her hands helplessly. “This is why I’d rather deal than fight! You haven’t been ordered to kill me. We can stop this at any time!”

Pyrrha shook her head grimly. “Someone has to take away this new tool Salem has, and I’m not allowed to do it myself.”

“You’ve always been a better fighter than me! You were the best at Beacon. I couldn’t kill you if I wanted to.” 

A ball of flame grew in Pyrrha’s hand and shot toward Yang, who twisted away at the last second to avoid it. “You have four years of training that I never got, and a magic sword. Use it!” A ring of fire grew around her, normal at first, but quickly shifting to the same brilliant green that rose from her eyes. Tendrils of half fire, half leafy vine lashed out at Yang and she was forced to jump back and retaliate only with the projectiles from her single gauntlet. 

Yang ran around to one side, periodically firing off shots which were invariably batted out of the air by tongues of living flame. A low slice from the sword prompted Pyrrha to leap into the air and hover for a moment before dropping back to the ground. She held up her shield in the air where it took on a green crackling glow around its edges, then sent it flying in a high arc toward Yang. As it passed over her opponent’s head, Pyrrha clenched her fist to stop the shield in its tracks with her Semblance. 

A pillar of lightning shot between the charged shield and the ground below, burning away a significant amount of Yang’s Aura, before the shield moved again seemingly of its own volition and returned to Pyrrha’s hand. “Stop holding back!” the Summer Maiden yelled. “You want to bring the rest of our teams back to life, right? Then you can bring me back again too!”

These words finally seemed to get through to Yang and drive home the reality of what she had to do. Her eyes unfocused for a moment, and when she blinked to return her mind to the world, the first tears streamed down her face. She balled both hands into fists and let out a wordless scream to the sky as she activated her Semblance. 

Yang slashed wildly with the Relic of Destruction. Rippling arcs of power flew from each strike and Pyrrha took to the air to avoid them, putting her own attacks on hold to concentrate on surviving the barrage. The moment Yang began to slow, Pyrrha threw her shield again, controlling its flight with one hand while she manifested in the other a vicious bolt of contained lightning. 

Pyrrha let the sparking spear fly, too high be aimed at Yang, and dropped from the air. A line of cracks raced outward from where she landed and from them burst a tangle of thorny vines, reaching out to twist around anything they found in their way. And in the air, far behind Yang, Pyrrha’s shield intercepted the lightning bolt and reflected it back to strike at her from the other side. 

Finally Yang released the full power she had been holding back for so long. Her eyes took on their own glow, the bright orange of Fall, and she slammed her fists together to send out a thick dome of flame that expanded out thirty feet in every direction. Pyrrha staggered as her Aura took a hit, and the second lightning spear in her hand fractured into a spray of splinters. Another explosion from Yang propelled her forward, still controlled but just barely, and she left a wide trail of fire in her wake as she rushed forth to strike with the doubly enhanced force of her gauntlet. 

Pyrrha, under orders to defend herself even if not directed to attack, jumped upward in an attempt to avoid the blow. But Yang’s magic let her fly as well, and though Pyrrha had a head start on her ascent, Yang followed just high enough to still deliver the single devastating punch. It struck not on Pyrrha’s chest but on one ankle, but still shattered what remained of the Aura protecting her body. The force sent her tumbling for a moment but she righted herself, still floating well above the hard ground. 

Twisting chains of lightning burst in all directions from Pyrrha’s hands and formed into a solid net of electrified vines around her, a crackling dome that looked ready to reach out and strangle any who approached. Yang floated at a medium distance, enveloped in her own sphere of blazing fire, with a hand to her face fruitlessly wiping away the tears that continued to fall from her glowing eyes. 

“I’m sorry, Pyrrha…” Yang murmured, too soft to hear over the roar of flames. 

Though Pyrrha could not hear the words, she could see Yang’s lips moving and knew exactly what her friend was saying. She closed her eyes and nodded solemnly to acknowledge her friend’s pain and their shared duty to release Pyrrha from her servitude and take away Salem’s most versatile weapon. 

Yang hefted the Relic of Destruction in both hands and surged her magic into flight once again to soar toward her target. The spheres of energy around the two girls merged and struggled against each other as Pyrrha released another blast of power directly into her assailant. Yang took it head on with the last vestiges of her own Aura and plunged through, unrelenting, to drive the tip of the golden sword through the center of Pyrrha’s chest. 

The Summer Maiden’s powers flickered out and the pair fell, stopped only by a last second jolt from Yang to keep them from crashing at high speed onto the rock. “Be free,” Yang whispered as she knelt over her fallen friend, and she closed her eyes and let her Fall magic dissipate. “Find our friends again. I’ll have you all back soon.”

No words came in response, only a slight movement on Pyrrha’s face. The sides of her mouth pulled upward just a little, and then a little more… and stopped. 

Yang remained frozen where she was, on her hands and knees, unable to move even as blood began to soak her clothes. In this moment her world had narrowed, and the only things that existed were herself, the body of her friend, and the sword she had used to do the deed. Her senses dulled, her mind felt slow, but something tugged at the edge of her perception. A sound coming from one side, heard even over the pounding of her own heart. The sound of… applause?

Yang looked up to see Salem walking towards her, wearing a pleased smile and clapping in admiration, and all her grief morphed instantly to rage. She stood and drew the golden sword, its blade miraculously still clean, and in a single smooth motion made a hard overhead chop toward the witch. Salem sidestepped the downward slash and took her scepter back in hand, ready to create barriers against a continued assault if necessary. 

But no further attacks came. Yang held the sword poised before her as she stormed toward Salem, but dropped it as she came close in favor if a single accusatory finger pointed at the witch’s chest. “_ You, _ ” she stated. “You are going to _ listen _ to me.” She jabbed her finger forward for emphasis. “And you are going to _ do _ as I _ say. _”

Salem raised one eyebrow. “Somehow I doubt that last part, but I’ll listen,” she said. “Excellent fight, by the way. I do love a good magic duel. Even if you weren’t supposed to be a Maiden.”

Yang bristled at the words. “What do you mean, I shouldn’t be a Maiden? Did you really expect I wouldn’t be by now, after all you’ve put me and my friends through?”

“Oh, no, it’s not that. What I meant is that you’re not Spring, and for you I thought it would be Spring or nothing. What happened? How are you Fall?”

“Cinder died thinking of Ruby, that’s how,” Yang snarled. At Salem’s confused look, she continued, “What? Did your spies not tell you? Cinder wounded Qrow so Ruby flashed her with her eyes again. Didn’t kill her outright, but it was enough to let Weiss finish the job.” 

“So… Cinder wasn’t at the Fall of Vale?” 

“Are you losing your mind? _ You were there. _ ” Yang rolled her eyes. “Ruby, Weiss, and Ozpin went to the vault but Oz was distracted by Hazel along the way, and Ruby couldn’t open the door by herself. She did her half and then _ you _ came in later and stole the crown. But that wasn’t enough, was it?” 

Yang gestured up toward the sky. “No, you had to go and reanimate that _ enormous _ Grimm dragon! The only way anyone was taking that thing down was with silver eyes. Ruby got on top of it but I guess she couldn’t concentrate, so she just steered it into the tower again. The whole thing came down on top of them and suddenly I found myself the new Fall Maiden. And now you’re going to bring her and everyone else back, or else I–”

“You’ll what? Lock Knowledge into the Choice vault and then kill yourself?” Salem was unimpressed this time around. 

“I can do better than that.” Yang stared the witch down until Salem finally broke eye contact first. She unhooked the lamp from her belt and held it up next to the sword. “I can destroy Knowledge completely.”

Salem’s eyes widened and she took a step back. “You wouldn’t dare…”

“And why not? It won’t have any more questions in my lifetime! I’ve already destroyed the Summer Maiden. I can take out the Relic of Knowledge and the Fall Maiden too. If you want any magic left in the world, you need to start doing what I say.”

“Not a chance,” Salem said simply, trying to maintain her control of the situation. This was already a doomed attempt as Yang remained a Maiden despite her previous choice, but she felt an obligation to at least see things through to their conclusion. And any more information she could extract about the effects of her previous changes would be welcomed as well. “What happened with–”

Yang raised the golden sword with one hand and gave the lamp a gentle upward toss with the other. She pulled her free hand back to safety and slashed down with the sword, and Salem watched in horror as the blade cleaved neatly through the center of the Relic of Knowle

“Well you’ve really done it now,”

“I told you I would.” “Are you going to start resurrecting people, or do I have to break that crown next?”

“I’m not bringing back anyone. I was already going to reset this timeline after I found out you were a Maiden, and you’ve just given me another reason. Sophia!”

“Don't fail me now, spirit. I need time rewound several minutes at least, and I want Ruby Rose's final thoughts to not be about Yang Xiao Long. And not Weiss Schnee either. Let her think about Huntress things, that dragon Grimm, the world in general. Or Ozpin if you have to. Got it?”

“It shall be done.”

* * *

The world shifted again. Yang Xiao Long had not yet arrived at the castle at the end of her long trek. Pyrrha Nikos was gone without a trace, having never been resurrected in this sequence of events. And I was back, carried along with Yang on her journey, having never been killed in this timeline. Which was very good, as I cannot be brought back with the Relic of Creation like a normal human can. I require Choice to undo my nonexistence. 

Salem waited, alone now, for Yang to come into view in the distance. The moment the girl was visible from Salem’s vantage point, the witch focused her magic and teleported forward to meet her, a full mile from the castle’s walls. 

“Hello again, Yang.” 

The girl stepped back in shock at Salem’s sudden appearance, but her surprise quickly passed and was replaced by a sneer of distaste. “Salem,” she growled, raising her golden sword to a ready position. 

Salem put up her hands in a nonthreatening gesture. “Wait just a moment, before we get into a fight here… I just have one question. Are you a Maiden?”

Yang’s expression grew even darker. “I wasn’t,” she replied. “Until this morning. I woke up feeling like I was on fire as the Summer magic came to me. Hell of a way to find out your girlfriend’s died.”

Salem let out an exasperated breath as she covered her face in her hands. “Ugh, not again…” She looked up again to see Yang staring at her in puzzlement. “Is there _ any _ Maiden you won’t be?” These words only added to the girl’s confusion, and Salem turned away. “Never mind. I’m not dealing with this again. Sophia!”

The spirit swirled out from the crown atop her head and began to introduce herself as she always did, but Salem interrupted her. “Don’t you say anything either. Just let me think out loud for a moment here.” She paced back and forth through the still air, speaking and gesturing to no one as she formulated a new plan. “These whole past few years could have gone a lot better. I got two Relics but lost everyone who worked for me – well, everyone who knew they worked for me. And I could bring them all back, but… gods, the briefing meetings would be unbearable. I’d rather have people just never die at all.

“Now, since I’m using the Relic of Choice, no matter what I change I’ll always still have Choice on me in the new timeline.” Salem glanced up at the misty green spirit and received a nod of confirmation. “Which means if I screw things up I can undo it again by setting the same choice back to how it was. So I don’t need to be afraid of making major adjustments. So, what could have been done better…

“Capturing Knowledge early could get me a question, before Yang used the last one. I could keep a tighter lock on Creation so General Tin-Man doesn’t walk off with it. The sword is what worries me. It’s the only thing that can destroy Relics, and it’s going to be the hardest one for me to control. Hmm…” 

Salem paced in silence for a moment. “Maybe I should just go after Knowledge first and deal with the others as they come up. And to do that…” Her eyes widened as an idea occurred to her. “They took the lamp to Atlas. I could put Eve on the board early, and she would wipe the floor with Ozpin’s little group. If they don’t have the Relic of Destruction to surprise her, Eve and Tyrian together could take down just about anyone.”

She turned to the waiting spirit and announced, “That’s what I want to do. When Tyrian chose to attack Ozpin and his group of students, I want him to go seek out the Winter Maiden Eve instead, and convince her to join him in a later attack.”

“This will be a very significant change,” Sophia cautioned the witch. “Much of the world’s development may become unrecognizable to you.”

“But in a good way, right? This one edit should knock out quite a few of Ozpin’s pawns early, and I know the general area where I can look for the Summer Maiden. All I have to do is track down Lie Ren’s extended family, and she’ll be somewhere along the path from Atlas to those people to Vale.”

“Your thinking is still so narrow,” Sophia warned. “Might I remind you, there are many people in this world who take no orders from either you or your rival. But, if this is your choice… then I shall make it so.”

A sly smile crept across Salem’s face. “Good…” she said with a slight nod. “Make the change.”


	4. Cycle 5 part 1: A Setback Forward

Yang’s hair was black. Of all the startling new things about the scene Salem found herself in, that was the first to catch her eye. The second thing, sticking up above the first and drawing her attention, was a pair of black cat ears that Salem was _ sure _ Yang had never had before. Her clothes had changed entirely as well; she wore a similar style to her alternate selves but in pure white now, not the slightest bit dirty as would be expected of anyone who had walked a great distance across these plains. 

It was only after several seconds of staring that Salem noticed Yang now held the Relic of Creation. 

“What did I just do?” she breathed. Focusing now on Yang’s face rather than her body, Salem demanded of the girl standing next to her, “How did you get that scepter?”

Yang’s head tilted slightly and she looked back with suspicion. “Um. You… gave it to me? Like, thirty seconds ago.” She paused a moment, then held the silver rod out in one hand. “Do you want it back?”

Salem looked down at her own empty hands and patted her waist on both sides. No blue lamp hung from Yang’s belt either, and the familiar golden sword was nowhere to be found. “Where are Destruction and Knowledge?” she asked sharply as she snatched the scepter from Yang’s waiting hand. 

“Are you okay? What’s going on?” Yang took a few steps toward Salem, her hand still extended as if expecting the witch might take it in her own. Salem took a few steps back to maintain the distance between them. “Whatever it is, you know you can talk to me. I’m here for you.”

Salem held the scepter of Creation in both hands and kept its tip pointed toward Yang even as she asked, tentatively, “Do you… work for me now? Is that what Sophia meant about a major change?”

Yang’s eyes opened wide and all the uncertainty melted away from her face. “You just used Choice!” she exclaimed. “About the plan for today, I assume? How far ahead did you look?” Her smile froze as a new realization came to her. “It was a bad timeline, wasn’t it? It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be now. Should we go back to the castle?” She moved to take Salem’s hand again, and again the witch shrank back. 

“That’s… that’s not how the Relic of Choice works,” Salem stammered. “Just… stand over there, and explain to me what happened since you first arrived in Atlas with Ozpin.” 

“Oh, it must have been a _ really _ bad timeline. I’m sorry. Just to be clear… you’ve gained knowledge of the future, but the cost is losing some knowledge of the past? Is that right?”

Salem stood petrified, only giving the tiniest shrug in response. “Close enough.” 

“Well, it’s a long story,” Yang said. “Why don’t you call a briefing meeting? Most of the team’s here. We can all fill each other in.”

“Most of the team… Hmm.” If they were alive, then things must have gone much better in this timeline indeed. Did this mean her plan to decimate Ozpin’s own team in Atlas had succeeded, and gained her one of their own members as an ally in addition? A meeting would be a good idea, to get a sense of what she had to work with and determine a plan to recover the lamp and sword which she still lacked. The past several attempts had seen her confronted by Yang and the Relics both, and her latest choice had brought the wrong one of those to her side – but controlling one was still better than neither. 

“I suppose you’ll want to teleport with me?” Salem asked. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’ll trust my past self’s judgement for now. Come.” She held out an arm for Yang to hold onto during the brief magical journey, but the girl stepped past it over Salem’s protest. She nestled close and rested her head on Salem’s left shoulder, with one hand against the small of her back and the other wrapped around her waist. 

“What are you doing?” Salem tried to step back but Yang moved with her. “I’ve teleported with passengers before,” she said, “and I _ know _ you don’t need to be that close.” 

“Oh, I know!” Yang answered brightly. “But I like to be anyway.” She stayed exactly where she was, and reached over to pull Salem’s left hand with the scepter around her own body. “You still have a whole arm free for doing magic stuff if you need it,” she pointed out. “This is the way we’ve perfected it. You’ll remember.”

“Hmph. I’d tell you to hold on tight, but you seem to be doing that more than well enough already.” Salem raised her free hand and concentrated, drawing the magic up around herself as she was accustomed to but shaping it with her fingers to extend the power over Yang as well. A pale golden glow surrounded them both, then shrank to a point and vanished, taking the two women with it. 

They reappeared in the entrance hall of Salem’s castle, and the witch quickly extricated herself from Yang’s uncomfortably close embrace. She shuddered briefly and ran her hands down the front and side of her robe as if to wipe off any trace of another person’s touch. A strand of pure white hair fell in front of her shoulder as she looked down, and Salem immediately straightened up and put a hand to the back of her head. 

“Why is my hair down?” she asked aloud. She stuck a hand into each of her dress’s four deep pockets in turn, but found nothing within. “Where’s the brace I wear under it?” 

“It’s down for the same reason I’m wearing all white,” Yang replied. “So we would match during the broadcast.” She pulled her own long black hair in front of one shoulder and stroked it fondly. 

“Every word I hear from you makes less sense than the one before,” Salem said. Yang opened her mouth to speak again but Salem continued first, “Don’t bother. Someone can tell me at the meeting, though at this point I’m not sure I even want to know.” She raised the silver scepter and called upon its power for perhaps the most petty use any Relic had ever seen. A twisted piece of metal appeared in her hand, a thin sheet of aluminum bent into the shape of a partial disk with six hollow tubes radiating from its center across one face. 

Salem wedged the scepter into the crook of her elbow as she raised both hands to telekinetically manipulate the lightweight metal brace into position and wrap her almost waist length hair around it. By now she had come to expect Yang’s offer of assistance, and waved her off before she had even finished asking. Salem set off down the hall with her new companion in tow, and conjured new ribbons to hold her hair in place as she walked. 

A spot of gray caught her eye as she crossed a perpendicular hallway and Salem halted to call out to the lone figure before he vanished into a side room. “Mercury! Help me gather everyone in the main hall. I am calling a meeting of the full team.” Mercury gave a silent nod of acknowledgement and continued on his way. 

“Where’s Emerald?” Salem asked, as she and Yang also made their way through the long castle passageways toward the meeting room. “Those two are almost never apart. Even though I can tell they kind of hate each other.”

“Uh… you killed her, remember? Emerald tried to assassinate you in your sleep. She didn’t know you’re immortal so she tried to stab you. Well, okay, she did stab you. Twice. It didn’t work.” Yang gave a wistful half-smile. “I almost feel sorry for her, really. Pining after Cinder for so long, but of course nothing ever came of it. I think she blamed you for Cinder’s death.”

Salem’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I haven’t slept in months,” she said. “I’ve been too busy. When was this?”

“Just a couple weeks ago. It was like three days after the Fall of Vale. Is something wrong?”

Salem stopped in her tracks at this new information. “It’s only been a few _ weeks _ since the Fall of Vale?” She snatched the crown off her head and stared intensely into its central gemstone. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” she lectured the Relic. “That’s not the power you told me about. Not the power I used before.”

There was no response from the spirit. She would not reveal herself or speak unless called upon by name, and if she were summoned she would expect her bearer to make a choice. However, Sophia had not acted outside the bounds of her stated abilities, merely exercised her own agency in a way Salem did not expect. 

She is a being of Choice, after all. Sophia has her own choice to make whenever her power is used: to sift through the timelines she is given and pick out a single one to make real, according to her own priorities. The life or death of each individual is considered first, along with their proximity to the Relic’s wearer and the wearer’s location on Remnant. The absolute time is less of a necessity. There are relatively few instances where Salem and Yang are by themselves out in the open a mile away from Salem’s castle, and so this earlier point was chosen to be the new present day. 

Salem shook her head, and placed the silver crown back where it had rested before. She continued on, falling into line just behind Hazel as they came to the door of the main hall. The large man pushed open both sides of the double doors at once and stepped aside to let Salem and Yang enter first, before he too made his way to his usual seat. 

There were six chairs along the sides of the table now, not four. Hazel still sat at Salem’s right hand, but opposite him was now Yang’s designated position. Tyrian had been demoted to the middle seat on that side, and next to him the spot once occupied by Cinder now belonged to Mercury. He and Watts entered together and took up their opposite positions, followed by Tyrian, who faced the empty chair reserved for Eve. 

“Have I ever told you all about the power of the Relic of Choice?” Salem asked once the group was settled. There was no need to waste time on something as useless as a greeting. 

The five other people around the table all shook their heads, and Watts spoke up for the group. “No, Your Grace, I don’t believe you have.” He knew better than to ask the obvious followup question. 

“Then now is a good time to do so. Choice is the strongest of the four Relics. It is why I focused my efforts on Beacon Academy first of the four schools. Creation is second-best, and that one we were able to retrieve easily through the efforts of Doctor Watts and our Winter Maiden.” Salem laid the scepter on the table in front of her. “We are in a better position now than we have ever been before, but there is still much work ahead. We must get the Relic of Knowledge away from Ozpin’s control.”

“Excuse my asking, maam,” Hazel’s gravelly voice interrupted, “but why is Knowledge now more important than Destruction? I recall the sword being a priority some months ago.”

Salem steepled her fingers in front of her chest. “I have seen the Relic of Destruction in action and to be honest, I found its power lacking. I would call it the weakest of the group, at least while Knowledge still has at least one use remaining.” She paused to take in the questioning looks her team gave her for a moment. “It does relatively little that could not be achieved by mundane weapons or Dust. As for how I have experienced it… this brings us back to Choice. 

“The crown allows me to change past events, or equivalently, it shifts me from one timeline to another. I am not the Salem you knew. I have arrived from a Remnant where things went differently.” She held out her left hand to indicate the girl next to her. “Yang was not with us. Apart from possibly Hazel, the rest of you were all dead.” She swept her right hand around at the other four members of the team, then folded both back across her lap. “I do not know how exactly I managed to slide eight months into the past, but this presents a unique opportunity for us all. I have knowledge of the future now – a future which will not come to pass as I remember it, but much of the information may still be of use.”

She glanced around the room, waiting to see if anyone would speak up. Her gaze passed right to left across Hazel and Watts giving their full silent attention, Mercury staring intently at a spot on the table and Tyrian doing his usual squat in his chair, and finally came to rest on Yang and her upraised hand. “Yes, Yang? Speak your mind.”

“Is that also why it seems you’ve forgotten some of the past? Because you remember a different past?”

“Correct. The event I changed was some time ago, just after the Relic of Knowledge had arrived in the Kingdom of Atlas. Events between then and now have developed very differently from what I know. To be quite honest, I don’t really know what’s going on in this timeline. I don’t have a clue why Yang and I were out in the middle of nowhere just a little while ago, or why she’s dressed exactly opposite to myself. The last time I saw Yang she was trying to kill me, and making a better attempt of it than you might expect. So this briefing will go both ways: you all tell me about the past, and I shall give guidance on what we shall endeavor _ not _ to do in the future.”

Salem leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “So… Tyrian.” 

The scorpion Faunus looked up and a mad grin came over his face. “Yes, Your Grace?”

“This story begins with you. Tell me what happened in the world, from the moment you decided to bring Eve with you for your assault on Ozpin’s crew.” 

Tyrian threw back his head and cackled. “Oh, yes, very good… You wished for me to attack, and I was going to cut them all down and make you proud. But!” He held up one finger, still grinning like a madman. “Nine on one, that’s no good. I needed Eve. Nine on two, that we could win. But on our way there, who did we run into?” Tyrian leaned over the side of his chair and held out a hand, his grin instantly replaced by a pout and wide eyes of mocking false pity. “A lost little girl, all alone, crying her eyes out as she ran.”

“Shut up, Tyrian!” Yang glared at the man and her cat ears folded out to the sides. She took a deep breath and placed both hands flat on the table in front of her to ground herself, then looked to Salem to continue the story. “Before that,” she said, “I was on a scouting mission with Blake and Oscar. All routine, should have been easy. Blake went up ahead, as the stealthier one of the group. She was looking around outside a military base while Oz and I hung back.”

Yang looked down and let out a long breath, and curled both hands into fists. “We heard screams, the sound of fighting. She was calling out my name.” Yang closed her eyes. “It was five human thugs. But when I went to help her… _ Ozpin held me back. _ ” She slammed her metal fist down on the table. “Blake had no weapon! It was broken in our fight with Adam Taurus. But because those _ racists _ were Atlas military, Ozpin wouldn’t lift a finger against them. It was too important to get the lamp to Ironwood, he said. And so _ he let my girlfriend die. _”

Yang fell silent for a while and buried her face in her hands. The others around the table maintained a respectful silence as well while they waited for her to regain her voice. “I never understood why Blake ran after the Fall of Beacon until that moment,” Yang said, her voice barely louder than a whisper now. “It was like my legs just took over with a mind of their own because the rest of me couldn’t handle what I was seeing. I had to get away and it didn’t matter where. I wanted to kill Ozpin, but… not while Oscar was still in there. I couldn’t. So I just… ran. Until I happened to bump into Tyrian and Eve.”

When she lowered her hands and looked up at Salem again, Yang’s face was wet with tears. “I knew Tyrian from Jaune’s description,” she explained. “I knew he worked for you. It was like fate, your people finding me just when I needed you most. Eve brought me here and I told you…” Yang shot a brief glance around to the others sitting nearby. “I told you my first love had been unjustly taken away before her time and the authority I’d always known as good had refused my pleas, so here I was in front of the authority of evil. You knew what I meant, and you took me in.”

Salem nodded sagely. “Ah… now I understand your behavior toward me in this timeline. I will have further remarks later, but, if someone would like to continue…” 

“I attacked anyway,” Tyrian blurted out, following his words with a short giggle. “Without Eve. I found the same kids I’d fought before. Shield boy and flower boy, and the girl with the big hammer. I wounded the flower boy, but then Qrow came back with the silver-eyed girl and the Schnee.” He paused, with an almost comically large frown on his face. “So I retreated.” 

“Is that all?” Salem narrowed her eyes. “In my previous timeline, you killed him. I made you choose to bring Eve so that you would kill more of them, but you’ve only managed to disappoint me further.” Tyrian shrank back into the corner of his seat and whined like a scolded dog. “However, gaining Yang as an ally is a very positive development indeed.”

“And I’m so glad I came,” Yang jumped in. “For all Ozpin talks about being good and protecting people, he can_ not _ be trusted with real people’s lives. It’s just endless sacrifices for the greater good, and he never realizes that all the people he throws away like that are part of the same world and the same greater good that he’s supposed to be protecting.” 

Yang scoffed at the thought. “He thinks he’s working toward a positi–” She stopped as Salem held up a hand. “Sorry. He thinks he’s working to bring the people of Remnant together,” she began again. “But you know who could have made a real difference on that front? Blake, with the White Fang!” Her face fell to a violent scowl. “But I’m done with peaceful anti-racism protests and marches. I’m ready to burn down all of humanity for what they’ve done.”

“I wouldn’t go quite _ that _ far,” Salem commented, “but the crimes of mankind are indeed many, and justice will come to those who deserve it. I see that past-Salem was able to transform you into a Faunus yourself, however. I didn’t know I could do that.”

“It’s not complete. These are the ears of a real cat. I don’t have the night vision that a born cat Faunus would.”

“If we could get back on topic…” Hazel interjected, “You sent me to supervise Yang on a simple surveillance mission to Beacon Academy. She proved loyal and her status as a recent Beacon student and as Ozpin’s traveling companion was essential in getting confidential information out of Headmistress Goodwitch. We learned that Cinder had not been sighted nearby and the vault was secure. Overall defenses were low, as the school attempted to function but dealt with constant Grimm invasions, still drawn by that petrified dragon. And before we left Vale, Yang adopted an old, sick black cat from a local shelter.”

“Meanwhile, Eve and I had our hands full in Atlas,” Watts said. “Ozpin must have told his team about the Relic of Creation, or if he didn’t, General Ironwood did.”

Salem nodded. “So I must have ordered one of you to bring it to safety before it was stolen. That’s very good. In the past I came from, the General took it and fled to Vale.”

“You did, and Atlas has suffered without it. Eve handled the military and their reliance on the staff, and I took care of the Dust company. The young Miss Schnee was causing no end of trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she had a hand in the revival of the Vox Faunus movement.” Watts cleared his throat. “I thought we’d crushed their little Dust mine revolt years ago, but it seems some of the old riffraff survived.” 

He caught Yang’s glare from across the table and protested, “Don’t look at me like that. I was accosted by a very rude woman with a handmade gun and I barely made it out alive! She was mad, I tell you. Talked like she knew me and said she was going to ‘give me the business’, whatever that meant.”

“So after that,” Salem pushed the conversation forward, “I presume both Ozpin’s forces and our own went to Vale? We knew it was not well defended, and I would have wanted the Relic of Choice as soon as possible. Clearly that also went well.” 

“Could have been better,” Mercury finally spoke up. “Cinder went after them all in Atlas and got herself killed. She gave her power to the enemy and didn’t accomplish anything useful at all.”

“I see…” Salem pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. “And Ruby Rose became the next Fall Maiden?”

“Nope. Neo was next, and Ruby got it after her.”

Salem waved a hand dismissively. “Same thing. I never even met Neo. She was just someone hired by Torchwick, who was hired by Cinder, who was hired by me. Tell me about the Fall of Vale.”

“Not much to tell, really.” Mercury pushed his chair back and rested his feet on the table. “You attack Vale, Ozpin hears about it, they all come to defend the place. Bunch of goody two-shoes who care too much, doing exactly what you wanted them to. The first attack was a decoy to get the Fall Maiden’s attention, and then the real attack started when she got there.”

“I met up with my friends there,” Yang continued, cutting in to relieve Mercury of the task that clearly bored him. “Just to let them know I was alive. Better that they see me alone first rather than alongside Hazel or someone they knew was with you. I was planning to let them believe I’d infiltrated your team and would double-cross you later, but… Ozpin was right there, and his face was just _ so _ punchable. Sorry.” Yang shrugged and continued her story. 

“I did manage to divert Team Juniper to fight Grimm at the edge of the city though, instead of coming to interfere with things at Beacon. Then I went and set some fires at businesses I’d read were discriminating against Faunus.” She sat back with a pleased smile, and gestured across the table for Hazel to tell the next part. 

“Only four people came to Beacon. Ozpin, Qrow, Yang’s sister the Fall Maiden, and the Schnee girl. It was my job to stop Ozpin, and Tyrian’s job to stop Qrow. We let the Maiden and her partner pass.”

“This sounds like one of the previous timelines I’ve passed through,” Salem remarked. “Ruby and Weiss get to the vault and find they can’t open it, I wait for them to leave, then I provide the other half of the key while Ozpin is still occupied up above. Not the one I remember living myself, but an alternate Yang told me. Ruby and Weiss both lived, correct?”

“They did,” Hazel rumbled. “And so did Ozpin. Qrow’s bad luck Semblance got the better of both of us and made Tyrian poison me instead of him. We pulled back the moment we saw the two girls again and waited for you to meet us with the Relic.”

“Which I must have done, since I have it and we’re all here now. And some time after all that, I’ve been informed that Emerald tried to kill me and her plan backfired spectacularly.”

“She thought sacking an entire kingdom went too far, and I agree,” Hazel said. “None of those civilians deserved to die. Especially when _ Ozpin _ got to walk away with his latest stolen body still intact.” 

“Hmm.” Salem eyed the large man with interest. “I appreciate your honesty, Hazel. But I would like to point out… we now possess _ both _ methods of raising the dead.” She reached out to take the Relic of Creation in one hand and rolled it over in her fingers. “I find it surprising after the other Remnants I’ve visited that not one of us has died in battle yet aside from Cinder. And no one from Ozpin’s team has died apart from Blake.”

“Unless the Grimm got some of those other kids,” Mercury pointed out. 

“True. We don’t know about Team Juniper.” Turning back to her newest lieutenant, she regarded the black-haired girl with a curious look. “Yang…” she began, “if I were to restore Blake Belladonna to life, do you think you could get her to work with us?”

“I…” Yang’s mouth hung open in shock and she sat frozen in place for a moment, staring back at Salem as she tried to process the concept of her girlfriend being returned to her. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I’m… conflicted, I guess. We loved each other. I still love her, even though she’s gone. But… I don’t know how she’d take it. Me being with you now. I mean, working with you. Working _ for _ you.”

“It’s no secret,” Hazel commented dryly. “We’ve all seen how you two act around each other.”

Watts chimed in with a snide remark of his own. “Yes, you’ve been spending a lot of time with this false Faunus lately. I do hope you’re not losing sight of our goals in favor of petty animal rights activism? What do you possibly see in her?”

Instantly Salem swiveled to fixate on the disgraced scientist with an intent glare. “Watts,” she said, her voice icy with obvious displeasure. “I have asked you in the past if your constant malignance is truly necessary. But now I am simply telling you: _ it is not. _ Your dislike of the Faunus species has been made clear many times over.”

“As has his dislike of same-sex couples and, well, just about everyone really,” Yang said. 

“Though Ozpin would call us evil, and the world might do the same if they knew of our existence… being _ evil _ does not mean we must be _ bigoted. _ I wish to rule a world in which humans and Faunus are treated equally. I would also like to remind you that my goodwill is the only thing standing between you and the tip of Tyrian’s stinger, so I would suggest you keep those _ opinions _ to yourself.”

Watts took the rebuke in stride, merely bowing his head respectfully and letting the discussion move on to other topics. Even though he had personally built Tyrian’s new robotic tail after Ruby Rose severed his original stinger, he knew he could expect no mercy from the sadistic scorpion man if Salem decided he was no longer worthy of her company. 

Yang raised a hand again to catch Salem’s attention. “Instead of resurrecting Blake, I have a different proposal.” 

“So soon?” Mercury’s voice came from the far end of the table. “You’ve only known her a few months.” 

Yang’s face flushed bright red and she leaned forward onto the table to glare at him. “Hey, you stop that! Embarrassing puns are _ my _ job!” She settled back into her seat and asked Salem, “Can I _ please _ break his legs again?”

Salem’s expression could only be described as tired. She met Yang’s eyes and uttered just a single word: “No.”

“Aww. Anyway… I think you should bring back Sienna Khan.” At the opposite corner of the table, Watts rolled his eyes and tried to furtively slip his scroll out of his pocket beneath the table. “She was a strong leader, not too passive like Ghira Belladonna or too reckless like Adam Taurus. And not a horrible abusive stalker like Adam. 

“Right now, the White Fang is in danger of falling apart completely. High Leader Ghira was trying to reclaim what’s left after Adam split the group and ran his faction into the ground, but he took Blake’s death even harder than I did. He’s just sort of shut down, and Ilia doesn’t have the experience or name recognition to take his place. But a reborn Sienna Khan… she could take over, and maybe also even pull Ghira out of his depression and radicalize him instead, like what happened with me. Plus, she’d owe you a huge debt for saving both her life and her organization.”

“Hmm. I’ll think about it.” Salem glanced around at the other members of her team. “Does anyone else have any suggestions?” No one spoke up to answer her, so she moved on to the final order of business: assigning new missions. 

“Okay then. Watts, you will return to Atlas and keep the kingdom in working order while the Relic of Creation stays with me. Hazel and Mercury, you go to Vacuo. Find out everything you can about the vault there, but try not to draw undue attention. Tyrian, I’m afraid capturing the Summer Maiden is _ not _ your job. I will seek her out myself, and Yang will come with me. I know where she lives, and I know for a fact that she will find Yang attractive, because in an alternate timeline they were dating.”

“What shall I do instead, Your Grace?” Tyrian shuffled forward to squat on the edge of his seat and tapped his fingers together with excitement. 

“Spy on Ozpin’s group. They should remain in Vale for some time. If you can take the Relic of Knowledge, do it. If you can kill Ozpin, do it. Otherwise, keep the violence to a minimum. Your previous orders to capture Ruby Rose alive and bring her here are rescinded. Now that she’s learned to use her eyes, I don’t want that girl anywhere near me.”

“Your wish is my command.” Tyrian stood atop his chair and performed a deep bow before jumping down to the floor. 

“That will be all,” Salem addressed the group. “You are dismissed. Yang, come with me.” She stood in unison with the rest of the team and all filed out of the conference room together before going their separate ways. 

Yang and Salem made their way outside to the piece of rock jutting out over the side of the mesa which served as the castle’s airship landing pad. Both stepped up a few feet from the cliff edge, and Salem raised the scepter she still held. She gripped it in both hands and pointed the yellow crystal on its tip outwards, and closed her eyes to concentrate on the complete form of an Atlesian transport ship. Once she held its detailed image in her mind, she willed the Relic to activate its power and make the ship a reality. 

An Atlesian transport ship appeared in midair in front of the pair and immediately plummeted down to smash apart on the red rocks far below. The two women looked down to examine the wreckage. “Well, damn,” Salem commented. “Should have thought that one through a little better.”

“They don’t come already switched on, I guess.” Yang turned and walked back to the bottom of the castle steps, and Salem followed to make room on the stone itself for a new airship to rest. “Also, are you sure Atlas is the best style to go with? Things are still a bit tense between them and the rest of the world.”

“Hmm, you’re right. My undercover identity says I’m from Mistral. I’ll make a ship like one of theirs. Stand back.” Salem aimed the scepter again and called up a mental image of a Mistral airship, the graceful, finned design more closely resembling an ocean vessel than even the airships of other kingdoms. She took a moment to make sure all the pieces were there, struggling a little with the complexity of the ship, but when she activated the Relic it all appeared as it should. 

“There we go. Are you ready?” Salem looked to Yang as she stepped up to the side of the ship and prepared to climb aboard, then froze. “Oh no. I, uh… may have made another mistake here.”

“What’s the problem?” Yang asked. She looked over the ship, but all seemed normal. 

“I don’t actually know how to fly one of these,” Salem admitted. “And I’ve just sent everyone else away on their own missions. I wasn’t even thinking about that before. I don’t go undercover often, and when we all went to Vale we had Hazel piloting.”

“Can Mercury do the Vacuo scouting alone?”

“I doubt it. You’ve seen how he is in social situations. He’s a good fighter, but not much else. I only sent him because he clearly needed something to do.”

“Hmm. Well… it can’t be that hard, right? Hundreds of people fly these things every day.” Yang jumped up into the main compartment of the ship. “I’ll try and figure it out, while you go change clothes and make yourself look like a normal human.” She gestured with one hand to indicate Salem should go. The witch looked down at herself sheepishly, and turned to head back inside. 

Yang pulled open the door between the central open space and the pilot’s area and moved up to the front window of the airship. There were two seats up there as she expected, but the control console did not look at all like Yang imagined an airship should. There was a steering wheel on the left side, and foot pedals beneath the dashboard like in a car. In fact, as she sat down to examine it all a little closer, she found it was nearly identical to the controls of a typical car except for an extra pair of pedals situated by her left foot. 

The ignition key seemed to be welded into its keyhole; or rather, there was no key at all, only a dial which activated the ship’s engine when turned. Yang gave it a sharp twist and felt the engine kick on behind her, and the airship rose slightly to idle a foot off the ground. A tap of the rightmost pedal sent the ship forwards, still hovering at the same elevation even as it left the mesa behind. Yang took the airship in a slow circle around the castle to experiment with the controls and discovered the extra pedals on the left controlled her altitude, while the rest seemed functionally identical to a streetcar maybe ten years old. 

She came back around and carefully parallel parked the airship over the edge of the landing strip just as Salem emerged from the castle door and came down the stairs to meet her. Salem now wore a different full-length dress from her usual, this one sleeveless, mauve at the top which faded into periwinkle from her knees down. It was decorated with lighter diamonds and kites on the lower half, and a trio of similarly shaped blue-green crystals rested over her collarbone with a matching companion studding the left side of her cloth belt. 

“How do I look?” she asked Yang as the girl sat on the edge of the ship’s hold, waiting for her. She carried a jacket folded up under her arm, and still had both Relics with her as well. 

“Beautiful as always,” Yang said with a smile. “You going to do something about the veins, or leave them showing this time? Doesn’t matter to me, but people might comment.” 

“I will take care of that issue when we get closer. I see you’ve learned to fly that thing already. That’s very good.”

Yang extended a hand down to help Salem climb aboard, and then led the way to the cockpit. “There wasn’t really much to learn,” she said. “Because you didn’t actually create a Mistral airship. You made a flying car that looks like a Mistral airship. Look at it, it’s even got turn signals. Why would an airship need that? Still, I’ll take this over a real one, just because I already know how to drive a car.”

“So do I, though I don’t do it often.” Salem sat down in the passenger seat. “It must have come out this way because I don’t actually know what the proper controls would look like. We’re going to northeast Sanas, roughly between Atlas and Vale. Somewhere in the general area of Lie Ren’s family, if you know where they live.”

Yang pulled out her scroll and loaded a map of Remnant. It automatically triangulated her position by comparing the distances between the scroll and each of the four CCT towers around the world, and pointed her direction as well relative to the planet’s magnetic field. Yang held the scroll flat while she took the airship out a safe distance from the castle and oriented herself toward her goal, then accelerated forward to fly at high speed over the barren plains. 

“Here we go!” she called, pushing the accelerator even farther. “I wonder how fast this thing can fly…” Beside her, Salem looked down at the ground speeding by far below, silently reconsidering her decision to let Yang drive. 

After a short while Yang seemed to find a steady speed that the airship could comfortably maintain, and she messed with the lesser-used buttons and switches until she came across one to maintain her current speed and direction on autopilot. “At this speed, we should get there in…” She picked up her scroll to look up the distance they had to travel, but the device could not settle on whether it wanted to connect to the weak CCT signal from Vacuo or the equally weak signal from Atlas. “In exactly network error hours. Wonderful.”

“Seven or eight hours, if I had to guess.” Salem sighed and placed the Relic of Creation down on the floor beside her seat. “I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll take this opportunity to get some sleep. For the first time in, oh, I don’t know, five months maybe?” She traced out a pattern in the air with one hand and a net of red light surrounded both Salem and the scepter as she laid back in her seat and closed her eyes. 

Twenty minutes later, she sat up again and looked over to see Yang frowning intently at her scroll. “Never mind, I can’t sleep at a time like this,” she said. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Yang… can I ask you something?”

Yang slid her scroll shut at once to give Salem her undivided attention. “Of course.”

“I got the distinct impression earlier, from you and the whole team, that you had some kind of special relationship to the Salem who was native to this timeline. That is a very foreign concept to me. Could you explain to me what was going on, and why, and how it came about?”

Yang regarded her with sadness. “You really are a totally different person, aren’t you?” 

“I am. And yesterday in my original timeline, I was even more different. Yesterday, I would not have considered you anything more than an enemy to be crushed without mercy. But then I met you, and met you again, and again, and I’ve come to respect you. As a fighter, and as a person. But in all those cycles, we still opposed each other. Tell me how we came to be friends.” 

Yang sighed. “From the beginning, then.” She reached down to pull a lever on the base of her chair and swiveled the driver’s seat to face Salem. “On my way to Haven last year, I found my mother, Raven Branwen. She told me about Ozpin’s lies. She told me that you existed. She proved to Weiss and me that magic was real. I didn’t necessarily believe everything she said, but she got me questioning Ozpin – and I was right to do so. 

“Then we got the Relic of Knowledge and Ruby asked, specifically, what is Ozpin hiding from us?” Yang chuckled. “That was pretty eye-opening. I learned all about him, and all about you, and about Remnant before the gods left. Before it was just a remnant. Everything you did… it wasn’t evil. It was done for love, and for justice, and because the world would have been a better place if Ozma was still a part of it. He seemed like a good person, back then.”

“Not evil at all? Even when I manipulated several kingdoms into attacking the gods?” Salem gave a smug smile as she too turned to face her only companion on this long airship ride. 

“Okay, granted, that was a bit of a dick move,” Yang admitted. “But the gods had wronged you first! Giving you immortality for the express purpose of keeping you away from Ozma forever? Cursing you to outlive everyone and everything you ever loved? And why? Just because you were a little rude to them and you dared to call them unfair to their faces. That’s not the kind of gods I’d ever want to worship.” Yang scoffed. “Honestly, they brought that on themselves. If they’d been better rulers, more _ fair _ rulers, then maybe all those people wouldn’t have been so ready to follow you in opposing them.

“Seeing that made me doubt Ozpin even more. It got me thinking of you as a person, not an abstraction. I was still going along with Oz, but mainly just because my friends were.” Yang broke eye contact and her gaze dropped to the floor. “Blake’s death was the last straw. I switched sides and haven’t looked back. You wanted to know why, and I told you. The exact same thing you had gone through so long ago had also happened to me. The same loss, and betrayal by the one meant to protect me.”

Salem nodded approvingly. “You had a reason to come to me, something other than just greedy self-interest like Watts or Mercury. Any version of me will appreciate that. That’s why you and Hazel sit right by my side while those two are relegated to the far end of the table.”

“We talked in private and I told you about the Relic of Knowledge, and everything we’d all seen. You were angry at first, but not with me. I had told you so much that you knew I was trustworthy, but you kept calling on me for one on one meetings even after there was no more new information to give.” Yang flashed another smile at the woman sitting across from her, but it quickly faded. 

“It must be so lonely being immortal, when the only other immortal in the world hates you,” she said. “When the vast majority of your life has been forgotten by everyone. So when someone comes along who knows everything and is friendly toward you… of course we stuck together. Neither of us could really open up to anyone else, but we could around each other. And it all just sort of grew from there.”

“I see…” Salem crossed her arms over her chest. “That does all make an alarming amount of sense, doesn’t it? So what exactly would it be, which… grew from there?”

Yang grinned at her. “You’ll just have to fall in love with me again and find out,” she said with a wink. 

Salem couldn’t help but laugh a little at the girl’s answer. “You drive a hard bargain just for a bit of knowledge,” she commented. “It reminds me of the alternate Yangs I met who wanted to bargain for their friends’ lives. They made such compelling arguments – well, compelling threats – that I had to either comply or reset time. I went through a couple different cycles like that.”

“Must have been serious.” Yang paused for a moment, her gaze alternating between Salem’s face and the crown atop her head. “I don’t see you turning back time to get out of this one though. Does this mean you accept the terms?”

“Not necessarily… It just means I haven’t rejected them out of hand. Maybe you should offer me more?”

“I don’t think I need to,” Yang said with a playful smile. “You’re stuck with me for the next seven hours and I know _ exactly _ what you like.” She relished the look of horror Salem gave her. “Oh, come on, it won’t be that bad. Conjure up a table and a deck of cards and we can tell each other stories while we play.”


	5. Cycle 5 part 2: Turning A Long Life Around

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The card game Yang and Salem are playing is real, and you can find complete rules here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1azutnRQVeDtovA187aSj2b93db9iTRkFFp5jhJWnS10

An airship glided over the forests of northern Sanas. Though its exterior appearance suggested it was from Mistral, it was a long way from that kingdom’s borders and had approached from the wrong direction, from across the western sea. Below it stretched miles upon miles of unsettled wilderness, ecosystems undisturbed by human activity and therefore also left alone by the creatures of Grimm which sought only to tear down mankind and all its achievements. 

Within the ship, two women sat at a small table, each staring intently at a hand full of playing cards and the two piles which sat between them, while the airship continued flying by itself on a straight line course. The pair made silent eye contact as Salem reached out slowly toward the face down pile of cards, unblinking, as if the motion was a threat. Facing her, Yang frowned and slapped a new card onto the top of the face up pile. Salem withdrew her hand as Yang began to recite an odd list of words and phrases, each according to a condition that her latest card had met. 

“Three of spades. Boarbatusk, cabbage… Sanctum? Squeaky mouse.” 

Salem shook her head solemnly as she handed Yang another card. “Mantle, not Sanctum.” She placed a second new card into Yang’s hand, more than replacing the one the girl had just put down. “And you forgot the beowulf.” 

Yang fumed in silent frustration and turned to look out the front window while Salem took her turn. She barely paid any attention as the witch called out each condition as they applied, because she knew Salem would only miss one by chance rather than ignorance. This was a game which increased in complexity the longer one played and which required significant cleverness to maintain an advantage through more than a single round, and right now Salem was holding her lead with ease. 

Yang stood and leaned over the dashboard to get a better view out to the left side of the ship. A ways off, the trees seemed to stop – and they had passed over clearings and fields before, but something struck her about the straightness of the edge between forest and not. “Hey, I think I see something,” she called without looking back. “There might be a town over there. I’m going to take us in a little closer.” There was no response from Salem. Yang turned back around and sat down to find four new cards placed in front of her. “Hey, what’s all this for?”

Salem silently picked up a fifth card off the deck and added it to the stack. Yang facepalmed as she finally realized her mistake. “Point of order,” she said, officially pausing the game so she could legally speak without incurring penalties. She spun her seat back toward the front of the ship and turned off the autopilot to gently bank the airship to the left. “You know, Salem,” she said, still looking out the front as she spoke, “you have got to be the most _ cutthroat _ Mao player I’ve ever seen. A card for every sentence, really? That’s just savage.”

“Plus one for delaying the game,” Salem replied. “It’s been your turn for a while now. And you see, the thing about sentences is that you stop talking at the period and then you start again. It counts.”

“Oh, I know it’s legal.” Yang put her foot on the brakes, and the cards she had left on the table slid forward a short ways. “You’re being an asshole, but that’s just how this game is. I’d do the same to you, if you ever actually made mistakes.” She turned to glare at Salem for a moment before returning her attention to the airship’s controls. “You’re just too good at this. I mean, I’m having fun, but it’s a lot more challenging than when I used to play against my friends at Signal.”

“It is fun,” Salem concurred, “though it takes a few rounds to really get going. It’s a good test of both memory and wits. Were these not such turbulent times, I would teach it to everyone to keep the team sharp during downtime, so they could practice lateral thinking and seeing hidden connections. It’s also a good test to see how well people can follow directions, and how they take to orders they don’t fully understand. I could use this card game to screen new lieutenants. Thank you for teaching me.”

“I taught the other you and she beat me just as badly,” Yang said. “Even though I copied some of her laws to use against yours this time.” She motioned for Salem to look out the front. “Also, there’s definitely a small village up here. We should land and ask around for anyone matching the Summer Maiden’s description. If you were going to cover your veins, now would be the time.”

“Right.” Salem held out her hand and used her magic to call the Relic of Creation into her grasp, then exercised the scepter’s power to conjure a mirror and a small box of makeup. She carefully concealed all the dark red lines on her face and neck, then put on the light jacket she had brought over her sleeveless dress and moved on to cover up the veins still showing on each hand. Yang brought the airship slowly over the small village, looking for an open space to settle down to the ground. 

“You ready? I think I can park over on the side of these people’s community garden.” Yang began taking the airship down lower, though she had to back up several times to line the ship up with the narrow space she had selected. Several people from the village below were already coming closer to investigate the unexpected arrival. “I guess you’re just taking the Relic as your weapon? You’re posing as a Huntress so you’ve got to have something on you.”

Salem’s eyes went wide with panic at the thought. The last time she had gone undercover, she had not had any Relics with her, only a staff with some imitation Dust crystals at the end which could fool onlookers into misidentifying the source of her magic. The Relic of Creation could serve a similar purpose, if she could refrain from using its actual power even as she channeled her personal magic through it. But the Relic of Choice? It would look odd for a random Huntress from Mistral to be wearing a crown, even if none recognized it as the emerald crown of the last King of Vale. But she couldn’t bear to leave it unguarded, not when its power could reshape the world without limit. 

She made a split-second decision to leave the Relics in the airship, but to leave them guarded. Her disguise was too important and the risk of theft here was low. She stood and turned to the back corner of the cockpit, pointing the scepter at the floor. “Stand back, Yang. You don’t want to touch this.” 

The Relic’s power surged once again and created a rectangular stone basin a few feet wide against the side wall, about eight inches deep. A moment later a mass of thick black goop filled it almost to the brim, bubbling as if it were almost boiling, parts of its surface occasionally rising up and forming into a crude rendition of a claw before collapsing back into liquid. Salem took the crown off her head, gave it one last look in her hand and grimaced, then dropped it into the middle of the Grimm pool. 

“Alright, that should be safe. Anyone reaches in there and they lose a hand.” Salem held up the scepter again and conjured another copy of her false Dust staff, then placed the second Relic into the basin as well. “I’m ready if you are.”

Her words came just as the airship bumped softly against the grass and Yang twisted the ignition key to turn it off. “I’m ready,” Yang said. “We’ve got our cover story. Let’s see if these people have any idea where the Maiden might be.” The pair walked together out to the loading bay of the airship and jumped down to finally touch the dirt again after so long in the air. 

They walked around to the front of the ship and were greeted by a trio of villagers: a heavyset woman with a prominent pair of ram’s horns, an apparently human man, and a teenage boy with the talons of a bird of prey who hung back a little behind the others. “Welcome to Izuruka, strangers!” The ram woman extended a hand. “My name’s Rahdi. What brings two young women such as yourselves out this way?”

Salem smiled at being called young, and reached out to shake the woman’s hand. “Zai Lin, licensed Huntress. This is my apprentice, Yang Branwen. We have two missions: one, to finish this girl’s training out in the field now that Beacon Academy is officially closed, and two, we’re looking for another Huntress we’ve heard was in the area.”

“Huntresses, eh? Well, you’re more than welcome here.” Rahdi motioned for the pair to follow, and introduced her companions as she turned. “This here’s my husband Jonah and our son Tizo. I s’pose you could call us in charge around here, but it’s all sort of communal living anyway. We can find a room for you as long as you want to stay.” There were more handshakes all around as everyone introduced themselves. 

“Oh, we don’t intend to settle down too long,” Salem said. “We’re just passing through.” 

“But thank you for the offer,” Yang added. They followed the trio into the center of town, and Yang waved to many of the people watching them as they took care of their daily household tasks. “There are a lot of Faunus here,” she remarked. 

“Sure are! We’re about half and half these days. Somewhat of a sanctuary around here, I guess. No affiliation with Menagerie, but a cat like you would fit right in.” Rahdi led the way up to the main square of the village, where a cluster of five thick wooden poles stood in the open. Four were topped with a light, all switched off at the moment, and the fifth held a loudspeaker on a somewhat shorter pedestal. The group passed them by as Rahdi waved them all into a large building, revealed to be the town’s single inn, with a modest bar on the ground floor. 

“We’ve got visitors!” Rahdi called out as she stepped through the door. A few faces looked up at the newcomers, but the room was mostly empty. “Treat these ladies to the finest Izuruka hospitality!” Yang and Salem were escorted to a table; Rahdi and Jonah sat down with them as their son quietly slipped outside. 

Four glasses of a pale lavender beverage were brought out and set before them. “Our village’s signature blackberry mead,” Jonah pronounced. “You won’t find this anywhere else on Remnant, so enjoy!” 

Yang looked down at her glass with apprehension. “Oh, uh, I’m… not actually…”

“You look old enough to me!” Jonah clapped her on the back and chortled. “We won’t tell anyone if you don’t.” He raised his own glass, but didn’t wait for anyone else to do the same before throwing back half its volume in a single gulp. 

Yang took a tentative sip of her own and found the taste pleasant, with a mild sweetness and not at all like the overwhelming alcohol that she had so often smelled coming from her uncle Qrow. She proceeded with more confidence as Rahdi spoke to the pair again. 

“So, Zai and Yang, was it? Are you sure you two don’t want to stay? You’ll get plenty of combat training in out here this far from the kingdoms, and we could really use some more Huntresses around.”

“I’m sure you could,” Salem remarked. “I didn’t see much in the way of defenses here, and you don’t appear to have the sort of natural barriers that have kept the current four kingdoms standing. How long have you been out here?”

“Oh, coming up on ten years soon. We’ve done well for ourselves. We get a few new neighbors trickling in every once in a while. No idea where they all hear about Izuruka, but they keep coming.” Rahdi paused and glanced at her husband briefly, then continued in a more subdued voice. “We did lose people to the Grimm in the early years. Our hunting rifles can take down the small ones, but no more than that. Tizo had a close call a while back. But ever since our protector came around, we’ve been doing a lot better on that front as well.”

“Protector?” Yang exchanged a pointed look with Salem. 

“Yeah, the only Huntress we’ve ever had out here, and the only one we’ve ever really needed. Cute girl, can’t be much older than you. Her name’s Xuri.”

Both the visitors smiled widely in unison. “You know Xuri?” Yang asked, hardly able to believe their luck. 

“_ You _ know Xuri?” Rahdi was as shocked as her guests. 

“That’s who we came out here to find!”

Rahdi beamed and spread her arms wide. “Well you’re in the right place. Everybody here knows Xuri! She takes care of this whole region, all five of the towns around here, all by herself. Did you see those big posts outside?” She gestured toward the door. “That’s the alarm. Any one of us gets a Grimm attack, and a light flicks on in all the other villages. Then Xuri hops on her motorcycle and she’s there in a half hour tops.”

Yang nodded in admiration. “Clever system you’ve got. That can be a long time to hold out under a Grimm attack though. So Xuri lives in one of these other towns nearby, and just comes out here as needed?”

“Oh, no, she’s got a home everywhere. She rotates through a week at a time. If she’s not in town when we get attacked, we all just pack up and hide in the basement for a while. The system’s worked for years, although…”

Both Yang and Salem looked at her, waiting for her to finish the thought, but it was Jonah who continued in her place. “Xuri should have been here this week,” he explained. “We saw her five weeks ago as normal and then she moved on, heading north to Korraska, but then she skipped the rest of the cycle and came back through here again. Didn’t stop long, just said she she was heading to Vale city to help with some disaster there. We don’t get enough scroll signal to keep up with the news all the time. What’s happening out there?”

Salem looked down at the table to avoid answering. It was her fault that Vale and its Huntsman Academy had been overrun by Grimm not long ago, though these people could have no possible idea that the innocent looking woman sitting with them was behind it all. 

“Vale was attacked,” Yang said, already formulating a careful response that would help advance their agenda. “Did you hear about the attack on Beacon Academy, a little over a year ago? Headmaster Ozpin disappeared in the chaos and was presumed dead, but there are reports now that he’s still alive and may have orchestrated the wider attack on Vale. We don’t yet know why.” Yang shrugged. “Hard to believe I was once a student of his.”

“That’s horrible… Good thing Xuri heard about it and went to help then. Still… if Vale is safe now, we could really use our guardian back. We’re all so afraid of what will happen if we get another Grimm invasion while she’s away.”

Salem looked up sharply and almost snapped at the man, “Don’t be afraid. You’ll bring exactly what you dread crawling right to your front door. Believe in your own power, and that conviction itself will make your new strength a reality. The creatures of Grimm feed on your fear, so don’t give it to them. Turn the tables for once. Make _ them _ dread _ you. _”

The large man gave a nervous laugh. “Easier said than done, I’m afraid.” Suddenly he realized what he’d said and tried to backtrack. “I mean, not _ afraid _, just… oh, you know.” 

Salem merely raised one eyebrow slightly and continued. “Any fool can pick up a gun. Anyone can train their body or their Aura. And that will help, sure, but the real test is if you have the mind of a conqueror. In this world your state of mind _ can _ make the difference between life and death. It takes a different kind of work to build up the determination to never take defeat for an answer, ever. You need to be filled with enough righteous indignation to stare into the face of god and make him blink first. And _ then _ you will be unstoppable.”

Yang reached out to put one hand over Salem’s own, and the witch jerked as if startled to look at her, breaking her intense stare into Jonah’s eyes. “Stop, you’re just scaring him further.” Yang looked back the other way to speak to him directly. “She’s right though. I fight Grimm with nothing but my fists and sheer willpower. But you know, not everyone _ has _ to be a Huntsman. Your typical team of four could more than cover a town like this.” Her hand remained over Salem’s and neither made any move to pull away. 

“Four?” Rahdi asked. “Xuri fights alone. You ought to see her. I swear, if I didn’t know better I’d call it magic. Her eyes get this green glow–” She waved her fingers out from the corners of her eyes to mime the signature of a Maiden’s power. 

“And she rises into the air, throwing fire or lightning all around?” Yang nodded sagely, and finally pulled her hand back to rest in her lap. “It’s an advanced Aura technique, combined with injectable Dust. Way beyond me, but Zai here can do something similar.” 

Rahdi looked highly impressed. “You can do that too? Is that why you’re interested in Xuri? Sorry if it’s classified or something, I’m just curious.”

“The Mistral Council heard about her powers and sent me to investigate,” Salem lied. “It’s a rare talent. Some train for years and never master it, but then others spontaneously figure it out on their own one day. Your protector seems to be in the latter category, as there’s no record of her at any combat school. The Council wants to study how she did it, and potentially hire her as a professor at Haven. They’re still one short after Headmaster Lionheart died.”

“She swung through Vale on the way,” Yang added. “Zai’s known my family for a long time, so she offered to mentor me after the closing of Beacon. My sister could have come with us, but she and her girlfriend are transferring to Atlas instead.” Casual details were the key to any convincing deception. It didn’t matter that Weiss Schnee would not be caught dead in an Atlas uniform. Total strangers wouldn’t know the difference, and the connection sprang to mind readily enough to be improvised off the cuff. 

Yang’s cat ears pricked up suddenly and she stared off into a corner of the room. “You hear something?” Salem asked her. 

“Yeah, beowulf I think, but it’s far off.” 

“Not far enough, if you can hear it.” Rahdi looked nervous and pushed her chair back as if preparing to get up. Jonah looked equally unsettled and looked to the supposed Huntresses for guidance. 

“Stay calm,” Yang admonished them. “Even if the Grimm do come, we can avoid driving them into a frenzy. That said, it was just one howl in the distance, so they’re probably not even–” 

A louder beowulf call rang over the town, now audible to even those with human ears. Both the Izuruka natives leapt to their feet, as Yang froze in horror with a sudden realization. There was something she desperately needed to tell Salem, but it had to be in private. She hung back as Rahdi and Jonah waved for the handful of other patrons at the bar to follow them and jogged to the door. 

“Gather everyone and get to the cellars! Quick as you can!” Rahdi turned in the doorway. “Please tell me you’ve got this. We have no one else to turn to. I’m sorry.” 

“We can fight the Grimm,” Salem called back to her. Turning to Yang, she continued in a quieter voice, “We can, but do we really need to? We could just leave. The Summer Maiden isn’t here. The bait we set to bring Fall to Vale attracted Summer as well, and if she’s there she’s probably with Ozpin by now. Although, I could always call on Choice to bring her back here. Who knows, in that timeline maybe the Grimm won’t even come today.”

“They will,” Yang replied. “It’s not just an unlucky coincidence that this attack came now, while Xuri is away.”

“What do you mean?” Salem led the way out to the central square, where Tizo was fiddling with a small box of wires attached to the alarm pillars. His parents waited impatiently in the doorway of another building, and Salem could see the fear on their faces growing by the second, drawing any nearby Grimm toward the village. 

“There’s something I forgot to tell you before, in all our briefing meetings. A comment Ozpin made once, just after we all left Mistral. He said the creatures of Grimm are attracted to the Relics.”

“What? Why? What would they want with them?”

“I don’t know. Even Ozpin doesn’t know, he just speculates it’s because they were made by the God of Light. All I know is the effect is real, and we brought two Relics to a village already steeped in negativity. This attack is our fault, and even using Choice won’t stop it. It would be right to stay and defend this place, even if there’s nothing for us here.” 

Salem rolled her eyes. “If you insist.” She took a few steps to the side to peer down an alley at the forest beyond, but saw nothing yet.

A siren blared from the speaker in the center of the square, and Tizo waved Yang over to give her instructions. “Press this button when it’s safe to come out,” he shouted over the noise, holding up the control box to show her exactly what she needed to do. “The alarm is on in the other towns around here too. You won’t get reinforcements, but they’ll be here to help rebuild tomorrow at least. I’m really sorry we have to impose on you like this, but–”

“It’s fine,” Yang shouted back. “Fighting Grimm is the job I trained for! Now go, your parents are waiting. We can handle whatever comes.” She pointed frantically at the doorway where Rahdi and Jonah still stood, the last people of Izuruka still above ground. Tizo nodded and ran to meet them, and the family disappeared into their shelter. 

Moments later, the first pairs of glowing eyes appeared in the underbrush, and a half dozen beowulves bounded out into the streets. Yang punched the air as they approached, sending bullets flying from her gauntlet and from the small barrel embedded in her robotic arm. The first shot landed upon each beowulf hardly slowed it at all; the second striking the same target caused them to stumble and bleed oily black smoke into the air, and by the third or fourth hit these small and reckless Grimm found themselves destroyed. 

But these were only the advance guard of the pack, absorbing fire and buying time for the rest to approach. The older and larger beowulves followed, those which had endured skirmishes with humanity before and learned from the experience to let someone else go first. They swarmed forth from the forest into the open roads, some pausing to claw at the buildings they passed, but most leaping toward the two women who waited for them, weapons in hand. 

A medium-sized beowulf reared up on its hind legs and took a swipe at Yang with its massive claws. She met its palm with her metal fist and twirled underneath its raised arm as if the Grimm was a dance partner, then once outside its grasp she jumped and brought her left gauntlet down on the back of the beowulf’s neck. The beast crumpled to the ground and Yang dropped to her knees to follow it, sandwiching its head between her metal fist and the dirt. 

She stood again and twisted in a fluid motion back to face the oncoming horde. Another beowulf swiped at her, stepping in the smoking remains of its fallen comrade as it attacked, and Yang blocked with the steel of her arm, even choosing to disable her Aura protection for an instant and absorb the entire impact into her body. The shock radiated harmlessly down into the ground and her Aura was back up a split second later, ready to shield her fist as she launched an uppercut into the beowulf’s chin. Something deep within the beast cracked audibly, and the Grimm’s body began to evaporate into smoke before it even hit the ground. 

Meanwhile, some twenty feet away, Salem stood fixed in position, scepter held out from one shoulder like a gun. Its central holster on the tip held a yellow crystal with others held back to all sides, and bolts of lightning shot one by one into the mass of Grimm. Each bolt needed only strike anywhere on a beowulf’s body and the current would race from that point to the ground, tearing the beast apart from within. Salem maintained a steady rhythm: fire, aim, fire, aim, fire again, holding back the swarm that poured from another alleyway. 

A series of crashes sounded from one side as a boarbatusk joined the fray, rolling at top speed into a house’s wooden porch and coming out the other side unscathed. It drew Salem’s attention for just a moment as it continued on to smash into the side of the next house and crack the solid logs that formed its outer wall. And just a momentary glance away was enough to break the rhythmic pattern of flashing fire and allow the beowulf pack greater entry into the square. 

“Yang, get down!” Salem called, and without hesitation the girl threw herself flat on her stomach. Salem twisted the handle of her weapon and the yellow crystal’s mount retracted, replaced by a bright orange one in the active position. Every one of them was merely colored glass with no function, but Rahdi had implied she sometimes watched the battles from a safe location, so Salem had to keep up the appearance of using a weapon. She spun in a circle with the rod outstretched and a spray of orange light followed, spiraling outward in a thick wave. The light condensed into razor-sharp black glass as it cooled in the air, shards impaling Grimm all around and embedding themselves into a neat line across the nearby buildings. 

Though a dozen fell under that barrage, more still stood, and the greatest threat was the boarbatusk which still rampaged unopposed. Its short stature and thick armored hide protected it from Salem’s blast, but the few glass shards which had struck its plating had brought its focus away from the destruction of buildings and onto Salem herself. She caught sight of the Grimm just as it made its short hop to begin its forward roll, and Salem too jumped and hovered in the air to let it pass beneath her. 

“How would a Huntress fight one of these?” she asked, hoping Yang would simply claim the Grimm boar as her own target. 

“Hard-light Dust!” Yang shouted back as she grabbed a beowulf’s arm and levered it over her own body to flip the Grimm onto its back. “Earth Dust! Schnee Semblance!” She stomped down hard on the beast’s neck and turned to face her next opponent. “Make it crash into something before it’s ready, to stun it. Then you go for the belly!”

“I don’t have fancy hybrid Dust here, just magic!” Salem swapped back to shooting lightning bolts from the tip of her scepter. “And I’m not some distant ancestor of the Schnees. All my children were killed before the age of ten!” The boarbatusk halted its roll just short of smashing into the legs of a large beowulf and turned around to make another charge toward Salem. She abandoned all pretext of using the scepter as the source of her power and brought up both hands to telekinetically raise a wall of earth in the Grimm’s path. 

The boarbatusk crashed into and through the mound, losing much of its momentum in the process. It was not stunned from impact, but it floundered for a moment and left itself open just long enough for Yang to pounce and grab its tusks in both hands. “That’ll do! Hit it now!” she called, putting all her weight into wrestling the thrashing beast onto its side. 

A spray of tiny fireballs struck the Grimm’s exposed underside and each exploded on impact, destroying the beast utterly into another rising cloud of smoke. “Such a shame to kill all these Grimm when I could command them to leave instead,” Salem commented. “But now that they’re in the area, they’d just come back in a day. And it’s not like there’s any shortage, I suppose.” She pointed toward the forest on the side opposite where the beowulf pack had arrived. “We’ve got more already.”

A pair of ursai lumbered into the square and one raised up onto its hind legs and roared. Yang turned to face off against the other, taking her attention off the thinning beowulf hordes. The second ursa sniffed the air, and then the pair split: the one which had roared moved to engage Salem, but the other merely looked away and wandered toward the edge of town. Yang paused, baffled, with her fists up and ready for a foe who never came. 

She followed it with her gaze: the edge of the town square, a short strip of open grass, the field of assorted crops… and the airship she and Salem had arrived in. Yang’s eyes opened wide and thoughts raced through her head, only interrupted by a strong blow to her back from a beowulf’s claws. The damage was mitigated by her Aura but the force of the strike still knocked her to her knees, and she pushed forward to roll and get back to her feet. 

“That ursa wants the Relics!” she yelled. “You keep fighting. I’ll retrieve them!” 

“You can’t!” Salem called back, but she was occupied with several large Grimm surrounding her and could not break away to run for the airship herself. 

“I’ll be fine! Metal arm, remember?” Yang quickly dispatched the Grimm which had attacked her and began jogging toward the ship. 

Salem had not remembered, until this moment. She had intended her protection upon the Relics of Creation and Choice to be insurmountable to anyone but herself, but had accidentally left the way open to Yang as well. This young woman who until yesterday had been her mortal enemy… could Salem really trust her with the power to rewrite history? Surely it would be impossible to fake such loyalty, such friendliness, such _ warmth _ toward Salem. She had never doubted Yang before, and the alternate Salem native to this timeline had clearly believed in her as well… 

And did she have any other choice but to trust Yang now? In moments the Grimm would find the Relics, and who knew what might happen then. If she tried to teleport, she would surely be interrupted before the spell completed, and that was not the sort of spell it was good to do halfway. She had to let Yang handle the staff and crown, and if she was going to do that, she might as well give the girl some advice on the way. 

“Alright,” she shouted, “but no Aura! If it’s active, it will be stripped to nothing in seconds!” No words came in response, but Yang raised a thumbs-up as she ran to signal that she had heard. “And bring the crown to me!”

Yang raced forward and took a flying leap over the corner of the garden, then stumbled to a stop against the side of the airship. She pulled herself up into the cargo hold and hurried forward to the cockpit, where the rectangular basin of unformed Grimm liquid still rested. She took a deep breath to steel herself, then switched off both her protective Aura and all sensory feedback from her robotic arm. 

Her fingers brushed the surface of the viscous liquid and miniature claws formed and collapsed in a frenzy, but she felt nothing. She reached in deeper and felt around, relying on the sensation in her shoulder to tell when she had found one of the objects hidden within. Yang closed her numb fist around something and drew it back, and a silver crown came up in her grasp, the Grimm tar running off its pure surface like water. 

Yang set the Relic of Choice down and reached back into the basin to bring up the scepter that also lay within. Its size made it easy to locate and recover, and it too returned immaculate from the inky blackness. Yang shook her metal arm over the basin to clean the Grimm liquid out of all the crevasses and joints, but the remaining droplets still burned when she returned feeling to the arm. 

A heavy thud rattled through the airship. Yang grabbed the two Relics and scrambled to exit the ship, on the opposite side to avoid trampling the delicate plants of Izuruka’s garden. The ursa was at the nose of the ship and took a second hard swipe at the metal, leaving four deep gashes in the side of the ship. Yang held up the silver scepter with its crystal tip pointed toward the Grimm and called up a mental image of fire. Blazing, all-consuming fire… but not the fire of the house in Vale where she had lost her arm. Not even the fire in Brunswick Farms to stop the Apathy pursuing them. 

The fires of justice and liberation, which she had set upon her return to Vale in protest of the mistreatment of Faunus. Fire that she wanted above all other desires, for its own sake, fire that she had needed then and needed to return now. She willed it forth and the Relic read her intent, summoning forth a gout of flame from the crystal that spread in a cone to envelop the ursa’s full form. Yang grinned in elatement, both at her successful use of the Relic and for the mere excitement of watching the blaze consume her target. 

Within seconds nothing remained of the ursa but a rising mass of smoke, gradually dispersing into the air above. The metal at the front of the airship glowed a dull orange with heat even after the conjured flames faded away, but thankfully none of the wooden parts had been caught in the blast. The airship blocked much of her view of the town square where Salem still fought – and also blocked Salem’s view of her. 

She held the Relic of Creation in her hands. She had the power to bring the dead back to life, and no one to stop her from using it. And there were several people Yang thought deserved a chance to live again… Blake, of course. Pyrrha. Summer Rose. Oscar, if he counted as dead enough to be brought back, separate from Ozpin. But she had to start with one, and the dead person at the forefront of her mind was none of those. 

Yang aimed the scepter down and concentrated on a face she knew from countless news articles and broadcasts. A person she had admired ever since her sudden new awareness of oppression which had never before affected her, whose tactics of resistance she had studied and adapted into her own. A woman she had never met, but who she believed deserved better with all her heart. Yang held the image in her mind and focused her will the same way she had before, blotting out all other desires for a moment to send every ounce of her energy into this single need. 

A shining dome of white-gold light appeared in front of Yang’s feet and she reflexively stepped back, but refused to let it break her focus. A ring of orange rippled over it from the top down to the ground, and then another. The bursts of orange grew thicker and came in closer succession until they overlapped, and the stripes became a solid mass. And then suddenly, the light vanished. 

Left behind on the grass was a brown-skinned woman lying on her back. She wore a black sleeveless dress adorned with red ribbons and a rope coiled around her waist, and down her arms were darker stripes like a tiger’s coat, matching the extra set of ears which came with her Faunus heritage. 

Sienna Khan blinked and rubbed her forehead as she sat up. Yang knelt beside her and offered her a hand, but the former White Fang leader swatted it away and stood on her own. She looked all around in growing consternation and finally fixated her gaze on Yang. “Where am I?” she demanded. “What just happened? I was…” A memory came to her and her confusion turned instantly to fury. “Where is Adam? That son of a bitch! I’ll have his head!”

Yang held up both hands in a nonthreatening gesture. “It’s okay, uh, Ms. Khan. I mean, High Leader, I guess? Adam Taurus is dead. I’m one of the people who killed him, along with Blake Belladonna.”

“Ghira’s daughter? I remember her… didn’t she leave the White Fang?”

“Yes. She and I were together since attending Beacon. It’s a long story with us and Adam and I swear I’ll catch you up on everything later, but right now we’ve got a Grimm attack to deal with. What kind of weapon do you use?”

For the first time the sounds of battle in the town square registered in Sienna Khan’s ears. “Chain blades,” she said simply. “But I can work with whatever you have.”

Yang turned to the side and pointed the scepter of Creation again. It became easier with practice to exercise the Relic’s power, to enter the proper state of mind to conjure an item from her mind with singular focus. A coiled chain appeared on the ground, easily thirty feet long if stretched out, with a horseshoe-shaped blade attached to each end. The central part of each endpiece was a handle, and a jagged edge protruded forth almost a foot on both sides, similar to Tyrian’s blades if they were not attached to his wrists. 

“Neat trick you got there. This isn’t exactly the weapon I’m used to, but it will do.” Sienna picked up the chains and took a brief moment to acclimate herself to the weight and length. “Meet back here if we’re both still alive at the end of this, and then you can tell me what the hell is going on.”

Without another word, Sienna turned and jogged around the front of the ship, holding her new weapon along the chain about a foot above the blade on each end, with the rest hanging in a loose coil on the back of her belt. Yang followed, placing the crown upon her head as she moved to free up her left hand for fighting. But as they rounded the bow of the ship, both skidded to a sudden halt at the sight before them. 

In the middle of the square, next to the evaporating remains of an ursa and many smaller Grimm, the alpha of the beowulf pack stood tall. It had Salem clenched firmly in its jaws and it shook her violently from side to side just like a common dog with its prey. The pair watched in horror as the giant Grimm tossed the woman aside and she flew limp through the air to crash down fifteen feet away. 

After the initial shock had passed, Yang and Sienna resumed their course to rejoin the fight in the town center. A line of huge black feathers stuck out of the dirt across their path and Yang glanced up to see a nevermore in the distance, still on its way out of the village but starting to bank its wings to come back around. A second black spot stained the sky farther away, but it was still too distant to see exactly what sort of terrible beast it might be. 

In front of them, on the stone of the central square, Salem slowly got to her feet. She appeared unhurt as she always did, even after ten-inch teeth had pierced through her entire midsection. Even her periwinkle dress had no holes in it after the attack, for unlike the black robe she habitually wore in recent years, this was the very same outfit she had worn when the God of Light first cast her against her will into the waters of life. 

This dress was as immortal as Salem herself, in perfect condition even after so many millennia, and it was the key to maintaining her cover. After all, if someone saw giant bite marks in her clothing with unblemished skin beneath, they might suspect something unnatural was in play. This way she had plausible deniability even to those who witnessed her injury firsthand, as she could always invoke the use of a protective Aura to explain away her continued health. 

Sienna twirled one horseshoe blade around on a short length of chain, then sent it flying to impale a smaller beowulf. She pulled it back and left a pair of wounds leaking smoke into the air, before a sideways swipe with the other serrated blade tore the Grimm to pieces. She sought a new target but the Grimm numbers were dwindling, with only a handful of tougher marks remaining. 

Before she focused in on another Grimm, the third woman caught her eye again. She was unarmed now, having lost her Dust scepter when she was shaken and thrown, but still she raised one hand toward the alpha. Salem’s eyes glowed a bright red, not unlike those of the Grimm themselves, and the enormous beowulf stopped suddenly where it had been clawing down the corner of a building and turned to face her again. 

Salem strode forward and curled her fingers, glaring hatefully at the Grimm. She thrust her hand downward and the beowulf alpha dropped as if its legs no longer supported it, falling to rest on its knees and front paws. It let out a high pitched whimper as Salem closed the distance and brought up her other hand to rest on the beast’s forehead. 

“Oh, she should _ not _ be doing that…” Yang said softly, and Sienna glanced over for just an instant before returning her attention to the scene. 

Salem’s eyes flared brighter and a shockwave seemed to pass through the beowulf alpha’s body from head to claws. Starting from the spot where Salem touched it, the Grimm’s huge form ripped into tatters, and each fragment dissolved into smoke and vanished. Though the fallen ursa nearby still smoked slowly from its shrinking pool, the alpha was shredded and gone within seconds. 

“Who is she?” Sienna asked aloud. “_ What _ is she? I’ve never seen anything like that before…”

“That’s my boss,” Yang replied. “And maybe girlfriend. I’ll let her explain what she just did later.”

“Hmm. A questionable career decision… but that’s your business, not mine. Are we even needed here? It looks like your partner of whatever sort there has this under control.” Sienna gestured over to where Salem was rapidly annihilating the remaining Grimm with thin beams of brilliant fuchsia light springing from her fingertips. 

Yang furrowed her brows in annoyance. “She really needs to stop that before some civilian sees her. I’ll go talk to her. Think you can ground that nevermore when it comes back around?” 

“It will be my pleasure.” Sienna readied her chain and moved to stand in the most open space she could find, facing down the approaching Grimm bird with her arms spread wide to present herself as an easy target. 

Yang ran to rejoin Salem, leaving the former White Fang leader to stand by herself. She reached the witch just as Salem was pointing a finger at the last of the beowulves, and she watched as it burst into a fading cloud of black mist. “That’s too much magic,” she gasped, a little out of breath but still energized enough to keep fighting a while longer. 

“No it’s not,” Salem retorted. “The Summer Maiden uses her magic openly here. It doesn’t matter. Besides, _ you’re _ the one who’s done something unexplainable.” Salem glared over at Sienna Khan, who still waited with her chains ready for the nevermore to come for her. “When you proposed bringing her back, I said I’d think about it. I did _ not _ say to go do it yourself. Now give me those.” 

Yang took the crown off her head and handed it to Salem, but kept hold of the scepter. At Salem’s suspicious look, she explained, “My fists are only good against things I can reach, and a few bullets won’t do much to two big nevermores. If we’re doing magic now, I’d prefer to have some of my own.”

Salem rolled her eyes, but withdrew her hand. “Fine. Don’t worry about Sienna Khan, I’m not going to kill her again. There’s no need for that. Just don’t do something like this again, please.”

“Sorry. I know I shouldn’t have, it’s just…” Yang’s words trailed off as she looked up to the sky with dread. “That’s not a second nevermore… That’s a sphinx.”

Salem looked up to see for herself. “No manticore pack with it? That’s odd. Should be no problem for three trained Huntresses, right?” For her nothing was a problem, but not everyone had the same immortality. 

Yang seemed much less sure of herself. “I don’t know, it took five the last time I saw one…” She grimaced and gave a helpless shrug. “But at least I have fought one before.”

The nevermore arrived first, making its second pass over the town while the sphinx was still approaching alone. Sienna Khan’s offer of herself as bait drew the bird’s attention, as Yang and Salem were relatively more protected by their position between buildings and near the sturdy poles of the town’s alarm system. 

As it swooped down, talons outstretched to grab the woman below, Sienna twirled one end of her chain and threw the horseshoe shaped blade upward to tangle around the nevermore’s claws. The moment it left her hand, she rolled forward to dodge the Grimm’s intended grab, then braced herself for the sudden jerk as she was lifted off her feet by the chain she held. She climbed hand over hand up the hanging chain as the nevermore swooped back up again and continued its flight. 

A few feet below the giant bird’s talons, Sienna stopped and clung to her chain with only one hand. With the other she took the opposite end of the chain and swung it outward in a wide arc, so that the hooked blade on the end looped over to stick into the nevermore’s back. She gave it a sharp tug to make sure the barbs held fast, then swapped her grip to that side of the long chain and clambered up onto the back of the beast. 

She stabbed at the base of its right wing a few times with one blade, while the other remained firmly stuck into the middle of the nevermore’s back. The bird wavered but carried on, even as it let out a screech of indignation. Carefully Sienna stood up, keeping a tight hold on her anchor with one hand, and she swung the other blade around in a vertical loop, faster and faster, then lowered it gently onto the base of the nevermore’s wing. Each rotation caught just the slightest bit of the Grimm’s body and tore a chunk off while maintaining the blade’s momentum, like a makeshift circular saw. 

The nevermore screamed again and banked hard into a circle as it flew with only one wing at full strength. It flapped erratically with its one good wing while the other moved weakly, and its wild thrashing accomplished its goal. Sienna lost her balance on the nevermore’s back and began to fall – but one of her blades was still stuck into the Grimm’s neck. She kept one hand on the chain and threw the other end desperately down at the trees below, hoping to snag one before the nevermore passed over the open fields of the town again. 

Her luck held, and the trailing blade caught between two diverging branches of a large tree near the edge of Izuruka. The sudden shock through the chain jerked the nevermore back and flipped it to plunge tail first toward the ground; one branch cracked halfway through, but only when the Grimm bird struggled to right itself did the additional force snap it from the trunk. Both Sienna and the nevermore dropped the final fifteen feet to skid across the grass, while a short distance away across the square the sphinx settled gracefully down on its paws and raised its head in a terrifying roar. 

“Okay, that’s a lot bigger than it looked from up there…” Even Salem was daunted by the sphinx’s appearance. “I hope you’ve got a plan – hey, where are you going?”

“I’m going to finish this one off while we have the chance!” Yang yelled back as she broke from Salem’s side to run toward the stunned nevermore. She turned her back to the sphinx and aimed the Relic of Creation at her foe, careful to take note of the equally battered Sienna Khan staggering away to one side. 

She needed fire again, the same blazing fire that had eliminated an ursa in seconds, but the scepter would not cooperate. Yang was distracted by the multiple aspects of the fight going on, by the sight of Sienna not looking her best, by worry over Salem facing down the enormous sphinx alone, and with so many thoughts racing through her head she could not achieve the kind of singular focus needed to call forth substance from the Relic. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply to try to clear her mind, but her desperation to release an attack before the nevermore recovered was interfering with that very same goal. 

“Yang, move!” A warning was shouted from behind her, and a moment later she stumbled as Salem shoved her to the side. Yang opened her eyes just in time to see a fireball spit from the sphinx’s throat smack into Salem, exactly where Yang had been standing not a second before. The witch was knocked flat on her face several feet forward, and got to her feet again to find Sienna standing next to her, offering her a hand. 

“Damn, first the beowulf and then that? How are you still standing? How are you still alive?” Sienna picked up the silver crown from where it had fallen and held it out for its previous wearer to reclaim. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Salem grumbled as she snatched the Relic back. “I’m fine and I’m going to stay that way.” She stalked off, leaving Sienna even more bewildered than before. 

Sienna followed and put a hand on Salem’s shoulder. “Are you sure? It looks like you’ve got blood on the side of your face there. Your hand too.” Sienna raised a hand and drew three fingers across her face to indicate blood-red lines to the side of one eye. “That jacket’s not looking too hot either.”

Salem glanced down at her hand and saw that some of the makeup she had put on over her red veins had been scraped off. She had no idea how bad it was on her face, but she got the distinct feeling that it didn’t much matter anymore. The fireball that had struck her had burned away most of the back of her jacket, even as it was unable to touch the immortal dress beneath, so a small strip by the collar was the only thing still holding the two sleeves together. 

“Ugh… whatever. Who cares about a stupid disguise anyway…” Salem pulled the tatters of the jacket off over her head and dropped it on the ground, then sent a surge of magic through her face and hands to vaporize the remaining concealer over her veins there as well. “I’m fine,” she snapped at Sienna again. “Stop staring.” 

“If you say so. I’ve got a plan.” Sienna got Yang’s attention as well and told the pair, “Keep that sphinx on the ground and keep it occupied. Don’t worry about the nevermore.” Without another word, she spun around and ran to the nevermore’s side again, and took a flying leap up to grab the blade still embedded in it before the Grimm lifted off again. 

She yanked the chain’s other end to bring the second blade to her hand, then carefully shuffled forward to right behind the Grimm’s head. Sienna raised her blades and stabbed them into the nevermore over and over, always keeping a strong grip on at least one barbed blade at all times in case the bird tried to throw her off again. 

Below, Yang and Salem split up and ran toward opposite sides of the sphinx. Its fanged snake tail struck at Salem, who knocked it away with a burst of blue light from one hand, while the sphinx’s head went for Yang. She slid on her knees beneath the Grimm’s massive body and rose to uppercut it in the chest with an explosive round from her gauntlet, but the blast seemed to have no noticeable effect. 

As the sphinx raised its paw and looked beneath itself, Yang ran out the other side to rejoin Salem. “Bait the tail out again,” she instructed. “I need it low and as still as possible. Can you do that?” She raised the Relic of Creation and moved to a safer position behind the sphinx’s back leg. 

Salem only nodded in response, and pointed one finger toward the Grimm’s long tail. A lance of bright pink shot out to strike midway down its length, and the sphinx growled and stomped with its back claws toward where Salem stood. She sidestepped the attack and sent a spray of shining white splinters in a narrow cone toward the beast’s flank. A quick glance to the side showed Yang with the Relic held in both hands, breathing deeply as she tried to clear her mind of distractions. 

The tail struck forward again, and this time Salem dodged rather than push it off course. She extended her magic as telekinesis now, pulling on the white snake head with enough force to slow its return to idle position, though she knew the Grimm would break free of the effect given a little time. 

This momentary hesitation was the only signal Yang needed to give her focused will the final push into something clear enough for the Relic to interpret. A solid cube of stone, five feet to a side, appeared in midair over the sphinx’s tail and plummeted to the ground with a tremendous crash, trapping the appendage beneath. 

“One part down!” Yang cheered as the sphinx roared and pulled at its tail. “Good teamwork! Now let’s plug this thing’s fireball spout.” She ran forward toward the Grimm’s head, but stopped short to stare up at the sky. 

The nevermore, bleeding vast quantities of black smoke as it flew, came gently over the line of buildings to the sphinx’s side. There was an audible squelching sound, and its wings went limp as a final, fatal blow was delivered by its rider. Sienna Khan dropped out of the growing cloud directly over the other Grimm, one blade held firmly in hand, and she sent the other down ahead of her to hook into the sphinx’s back and pull herself faster than gravity already commanded. 

She landed blade first, burying the two serrated prongs into the sphinx’s back all the way to the hilt. The giant beast thrashed about and flapped its wings, but it could only rise a few feet off the ground before the several ton weight on its tail brought it down again. 

“Bind its wings!” Yang called up to the woman standing on the sphinx’s back. “I’ll get new chains for you down here!” She turned away and called up the mental image of Sienna’s new weapon once again, preparing to summon another copy from the Relic of Creation. 

The tiger Faunus took just a second to aim her free blade, then threw it in a wide arc so that the chain looped around one wing of the giant sphinx. She caught it effortlessly as it came back, and then sent it flying again around the other side. The chain just barely reached her again after circling the base of both wings, but with every movement the sphinx made it slipped a little tighter, and Sienna stayed on the Grimm’s back to tie the two ends together and then stab the second blade in near the first. 

She slid down off the beast’s neck and landed neatly on her feet next to Yang and Salem. She gladly took the new chain Yang offered her. “You two got any more magic tricks?” she asked. “Drop a cube down its throat maybe?”

“That’s the plan. I just need its mouth open.” Yang smirked and caressed the scepter with pride. 

“And we can handle that part, can’t we, human?” Sienna moved to face down the Grimm head on, and Salem reluctantly followed. Sienna whirled both her blades around on a foot of chain, and once each was up to speed she let them fly one at a time to jab into the sphinx’s flesh and pull back again, alternating in a steady rhythm as she strafed slowly around to one side. Salem sent her own volleys of magical attacks from nearby to ensure she and Sienna kept the sphinx’s full attention. 

The sphinx swiped at them with its front claws and Sienna performed a graceful cartwheel to the side with neither hand touching the ground, continuing her relentless assault afterward without missing a beat. Her repeated punctures were starting to show real damage to the Grimm now, as smoke bled from its front legs and formed a haze over the group. 

Finally it growled again and a hint of flame showed between its teeth. The sphinx opened its jaws wide as the fireball within grew – and instantly, another cube of the same gray stone appeared out of nothingness to wedge itself behind the Grimm’s sharp teeth. It released the fireball early in its surprise, and flames spewed out to both sides as the attack stopped short before it had even come out. The sphinx coughed smoke and shook its head back and forth, but could not dislodge the obstruction. 

“It’s just a sandbag now,” Sienna called. “Let’s tear this thing apart!” She intensified her attack and moved in a faster circuit around the beast, piercing twin holes all around its body with her lightning-fast blades. Salem’s hands crackled with a deep purple light and she released a slow-moving orb which sent out repeated shocks as it arced over the sphinx’s back. Yang, for her part, finally activated her Semblance; though she had lost relatively little Aura so far, even a moderate boost in strength would make a difference against such a sturdy foe. 

The Grimm could only fight back with its claws, and two of its three assailants kept well out of its reach. Yang danced between the sphinx’s legs and struck at each in turn with her explosive rounds, always moving, always watchful for retaliation from the giant beast. And finally, under the pain of a thousand tiny wounds, the sphinx’s legs weakened and it crashed to the ground, its vast bulk already dissolving into black smoke. 

The trio all looked around at their surroundings, and found no more Grimm. “We did it,” Yang said, almost panting for breath as she disabled her Semblance. “Good job, team. Now I think I could use a nap.” There was hardly a house around which had not suffered damage at the claws of one Grimm or another, but all were still standing. Nothing seemed to be on fire – and in a battle which included both Yang Xiao Long and a sphinx, that alone was quite an accomplishment. 

“It’s over,” Sienna confirmed. “Now will you two _ please _ tell me what in the world is going on here? How literal _ magic _ seems to be real, and no one knows about it? How I can be brought back from the dead – by the very person who avenged my murder, no less? How _ you _–” She glared at Salem. “–can just walk away from something that would kill a normal person, then a minute later take another hit just as hard? Can you tell me how you poofed that beowulf with a touch, and why you didn’t just do the same to the sphinx?”

Salem raised one eyebrow. “If I were to explain everything you found strange, we’d be here all day. But about the sphinx… or any particularly strong enemy, for that matter… it’s not about simply overpowering them. That way lies an arms race and collateral destruction, and then no one comes out the winner. Instead, it’s about taking away the power they have, so that you may destroy them at your leisure. That’s exactly what we did here.” 

She looked to Yang over by the alarm posts and continued, “I believe Cinder really took that lesson to heart. Although if I recall, she also took Weiss Schnee’s sword to heart, so try not to emulate her _ too _ much.” 

“Schnee like the Dust company? The company who use Faunus debt-slaves for all their unpleasant work?” Nothing this strange woman said made Sienna any less baffled. 

“That’s the one! Their heiress killed someone who used to work for me. But it’s okay, I still got the thing I needed her for.” Salem smiled as behind her the town’s alarm siren switched off. “Ah, the natives should be coming out of hiding now. Sienna, could you explain to the nice people of Izuruka what happened here, and that they’re safe now? We’ll be in the airship.”

“Explain what?” Sienna held up both hands helplessly. “I don’t understand anything! Who _ are _ you people?” 

“Just make something up then,” Salem told her as she turned to leave. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like we’d be telling them the truth either.” She set off at a brisk pace out of the town square, with Yang by her side. 

Once the pair were safely away from prying eyes and curious ears, sitting on the edge of the airship’s loading bay, Salem turned to her companion and asked tentatively, “Are all small towns like this?”

“Like what?”

“So… weak? Defenseless? Unable or unwilling to fight back?”

Yang let out a long breath of air through her teeth. “You don’t get out of that castle much, do you?” The only response was a brief shake of Salem’s head. “This is normal,” Yang went on. “This is what all of Remnant looks like, outside of the major kingdoms.” 

“But… the whole place would have been wiped out in a single attack, if we hadn’t been here. That can’t be right.” 

Yang shrugged. “That’s how it is. Towns rise up, they get flattened, the survivors build a new one. That’s how it’s always been.” 

Salem looked offended. “It is not! Not in my time. Towns rose up, they hired protection for a few years until they reached critical mass, then the general populace was able to defend themselves from almost any Grimm attack. That’s how it’s supposed to be.” 

“If everyone has magic, maybe.” Yang leaned back on her hands. “But these days the average untrained person _ can’t _ take down a Grimm or two by themselves. You need Huntsmen, and they’re always in short supply.”

Salem sat in silence, staring into the distance. A minute passed without her moving a muscle, until finally she lowered her head to rest her face in her hands. 

“Are you okay?” Yang asked, and reflexively she moved to place a comforting hand on the witch’s shoulder. 

A heavy sigh came in response, then without looking up Salem spoke. “Have I been doing too much?” she asked. She paused a moment, but kept going before Yang could ask what she meant. “Too much division. Too much destruction.” She raised her head again to stare into Yang’s eyes. “I want the kingdoms weak. I want them in chaos, so I can step in and take control. I don’t want them destroyed. I don’t want all the people dead. But that’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it? By sowing enough disharmony to beat the kingdoms down, I’ve been beating everyone outside them out of existence.”

Yang looked back with a warm smile. “You can’t blame yourself for everything. You’ve had a hand in things, sure, but it’s not your fault the world doesn’t have magic anymore. The gods did that.” She held up a finger in warning before Salem could protest. “And you didn’t make them do it! They could have sent your army home with a snap of their fingers and left it at that.”

“I know, it’s just… I never wanted my primary job to be killing people, for eternity. But causing distrust and war was always necessary. For thousands of years, Ozpin has kept all four Relics close to him. He’s had the ability to force a judgement on the world any time he wanted, so it was my duty to make sure the outcome would always be negative, to make him hold off on summoning the gods back to Remnant. It’s only in the last eighty years since the Great War that he finally split them up and founded the four Huntsman Academies to guard them.”

Salem leaned back to lie flat on the airship floor, staring up at the ceiling. “Only in the last eighty years have I had any chance of taking the Relics for myself, and he put quite a serious lock on them. It's taken this long to get through. But now that I have two of them – specifically, now that I have Choice and I know that it can’t be taken away from me – I don’t really need to keep dividing humanity, do I? Ozpin can’t bring on the judgement day by himself anymore. I can save Remnant from the gods’ tyranny without making it such a difficult place to live.”

“Better than that,” Yang said. “The Relic of Choice lets you edit the past, right? You could undo all those millenia of conflict.”

Salem raised her head to stare at her. “You know, you’re right. I could. The one constant about the Relic of Choice is that you can never shift into a timeline where you don’t have it. It doesn’t _ seem _ like it would cause a paradox if you could–”

“But it’s helpful, so there’s no need to question it,” Yang finished for her. 

“Exactly. Now, the problem with reaching too far into the past is that it seems to set the present day back too. I was eight months ahead of this time before I jumped into this timeline. If I jump back too far I could lose the Relic of Creation, just like how Knowledge and Destruction vanished when I shifted myself here. Destruction is still in its vault now; that’s why we need Xuri.”

“So what are you planning to do?” Yang pulled her legs up into the body of the ship and turned to sit cross-legged facing Salem. 

“I’ll undo recent suffering, but most of the past stays in the past. Beyond living memory it hardly matters now anyway. I’d say we have three goals. One: undo the Fall of Vale. There must be _ some _ timeline where I retrieved Choice stealthily and never destroyed half the city. Two: get the other two Relics. And three: figure out a way to neutralize Ozpin for the long term, so he can’t _ ever _ get them back.”

Yang nodded. “Sounds good! We can get a start on goal number two by making Xuri choose to stay here. After all, Vale isn’t going to need her help for much longer.”

“That’s what I was thinking too.” Salem sat up and took a matching posture to Yang. “Sophia!”

Green mist billowed from the crown atop Salem’s head and swirled out to the open space beside the airship before solidifying into the Relic’s familiar human appearance. “Greetings. My name is Sophia. I am a being created by–”

“Yes, yes, I know. I’ve used you before, you just don’t remember it. The choice Yang and I would like to edit…” She looked over to see Yang frozen in time. “Include Yang, please. I would like us both to keep continuity between timelines.” The spirit waved a hand and Yang’s stasis ended, and she looked on in wonder at the ghostly figure before them. 

“The choice we would like changed,” Salem continued, “is when the Summer Maiden Xuri decided to leave her home towns to assist Vale, a few weeks ago. Instead, I want her to rationalize that Vale can get by without her, so she should stay and defend this place from the inevitable Grimm attacks brought on by the news of Vale’s plight.” 

Sophia nodded. “I can do that. You both agree on this use of my powers?”

Salem and Yang exchanged one more glance between them, then spoke in unison. “We do.”


	6. Cycle 6: Bright Warmth and Cold Purpose

“So, you wanted to talk about my powers?” The zebra Faunus looked expectantly to the woman sitting diagonally across from her in the small gathering. Four people sat on the floor of the airship’s loading bay, in various stages of exhaustion, with their respective weapons all resting beside them. The young woman who had spoken had a striking appearance in black and white, like she had stepped out of a photograph before color technology had been invented. 

Though her face and hands were entirely black, rings of white an inch and a half wide wrapped horizontally around her bare arms, forming even stripes of the two opposing colors. Similar stripes crossed her stomach beneath the half-open vest she wore. Her clothing matched the theme, decorated with the same stripes except oriented diagonally to form a vee shape on her upper body, and vertical lines running down the length of her loose knee length pants. A tail of thick black hair extended behind her, its tip hanging off the edge of the airship bay. 

No response to the woman’s inquiry came. Salem merely blinked and looked over to Yang sitting next to her on the airship floor, and a wide smile came across her face. Yang returned the grin and held up a hand for a high five. “We did it!” she said, as Salem brought up her own hand to complete the celebratory gesture. 

“We did,” Salem confirmed. “I think that’s the first time Sophia has actually done exactly what I wanted from her.”

“What?” A fourth voice interjected, from Sienna Khan sitting to Salem’s other side. “Are you two  _ ever _ going to explain anything, or should I just start flying this ship back to Mistral? I’ve got an organization that thinks I’m dead, and I don’t trust them to keep functioning without me.”

“Yeah, they haven’t been.” Yang shook her head. “That’s why I brought you back.”

Sienna squinted at her. “She brought me back, not you.” She waved a hand toward Salem. “Has something else just happened that I don’t know about?”

“Many things, and I suppose it’s time to tell you about them. Both of you. But to start… Xuri, what do you know about your powers? Tell me everything you have so far, and we’ll fill in the gaps for you.” 

“Well…” The Summer Maiden took a deep breath. “It just came to me out of nowhere one day, about six years ago. I was just going about my business when suddenly I felt like I was burning, especially on my face. I looked in the mirror and my eyes had this green light around them.” Xuri paused and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again the familiar Maiden flare rose from the corners. “Just like this.” 

She blinked to shut off the magical glow. “The pain went away and I didn’t think much of it for a while, until a flock of baby ravagers came after me and my friends one day. Tiny little things, normally you just give them a good swat and they move on. But this time when I raised my hands, fire came out.” She shrugged and made a face. “I had no idea what I was doing. It was just instinctual or something. But when my friends told me my eyes had been glowing again, I figured there was something more to it.”

“There is indeed,” Salem said. “There have been many people like you over the years, always exactly four at any given time. You would have received your powers after their previous owner died. If you never knew anyone like that, you were likely a random selection rather than the more, uh… intimate… inheritance process.”

The corners of Xuri’s mouth turned down and she pulled her head back slightly. “The– the what?” 

“There’s a way to control who gets the magic next,” Yang said, and Salem nodded to acknowledge her as continuing the explanation. “And it  _ is _ magic. The four Maidens, as they’re called – there’s always four, always women, always fairly young when they first get their powers – when one dies, if her final thoughts are about someone else who meets the conditions, then that person gets the powers after her. If not, they can go to anyone.”

“That must have been it.” Xuri’s eyes took on their green glow again and lightning crackled idly between her fingers. “There’s nothing special about me. When I talked to a Huntsman my parents knew, he’d never heard of anyone else with my powers either. My Aura wasn’t even unlocked then, so he knew it couldn’t be my Semblance. He gave me some basic Aura training and said I should apply to Shade, but I didn’t want to stay in Vacuo.”

“Why not?” Yang was curious, even if the question might not be relevant to the discussion of magic. 

Xuri merely gave a half shrug. “I came here for the same reason as a lot of people. For all Vacuo prides itself on being accepting, with that ‘if you can survive here, you belong here’ spiel, the fact remains that it’s a major human kingdom and there are a lot of unpleasant humans there. And I kind of stand out, looking like this.” She gestured down at her striped skin and shifted her weight to wrap her tail forward around her legs. 

“It’s a good look,” Sienna spoke up, turning to show off the dark stripes down her own orange-brown arms. “Now, there’s no shame in finding a safe haven away from oppression, but if you wanted to fight for justice everywhere, the White Fang could really use someone like you.”

Xuri smiled nervously. “No offense, but I think I preferred the old White Fang. I’d rather not have to hurt people to get what I want. But that’s another question…” She locked eyes with Salem across the airship bay. “Did you really bring her back from the dead? Is that a magic thing too? Are you another one of those four?”

“Not quite.” Salem held up her hand and four motes of light appeared above it: blue, orange, green, and pink, revolving in a slow vertical loop. “Let these represent the Maidens. They’re named after the seasons, and your power corresponds to Summer.” The green mote glowed brighter for a moment, then returned to normal. 

“Wait just a moment.” Sienna glared at Salem. “Are you telling me that old fairy tale about the seasons is real?”

“It’s not the only one that’s real,” Yang warned. “After all, even the wildest stories have to come from somewhere. Do you know The Tale of the Two Brothers?”

“…You’ve got to be kidding me. Gods? Really?”

“The gods are long gone. But the Relics they left behind…” Yang picked up the scepter from where it lay across her lap. “This is Creation.”

Salem took the crown off her head and turned it over in her hands. “And this is Choice. I know where the other two are, and I know how to get them.”

“But to do that, we need you.” Yang pointed a finger toward Xuri. “A Maiden.”

“Specifically, the Summer Maiden. The Relics are well protected. They’ve been kept in vaults tied to the Maidens’ powers, and you, Xuri, hold the key to the Relic of Destruction.”

Xuri looked a little queasy at the thought. “Even if all this is true – and it sounds crazy, but it does explain some things – even so… I’m not sure I really want a Relic of Destruction? I’ve always tried to preserve life, not end it.”

“You wouldn’t have to use it,” Yang told her. “In fact, we don’t want to use it either. But we’re not the only ones looking for the Relics.” She looked back to Salem. “If you’d like to explain…”

Salem grimaced, but after a short pause she did begin to speak. “The gods did not create the Maidens,” she stated. “The fairy tale suggests their powers were gifted by a wizard, but this is also not quite true. The wizard provided only a very small contribution. Most of the work was done by me.” 

The two striped Faunus women stared at her. “You?” Sienna asked, incredulous. 

“But…” Xuri tentatively spoke up, still trying to formulate the thoughts in her head. “If the Maidens pass on their power when they die… if there’s a whole line of succession for each of the four… Are you saying you created the originals? That must have been ages ago.” The alternative was that Maidens had a very short lifespan, and she wasn’t sure which was more terrifying. 

“You’re learning,” Salem said with an approving nod. “That’s very good. And yes, it has been many thousands of years since I brought the first Maidens into being.”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Yang interjected. “I mean, she doesn’t look a day over six hundred.”

Salem glared at her and gave Yang a backhanded slap on the shoulder, but her frown broke into laughter as she pulled her hand back. She called up the four glowing motes of color in her hand again, but this time turned the figure sideways. A darker green speck of light appeared to one side of the square, and one in a deep reddish purple appeared opposite it. 

“The wizard and I are both immortal. He is an emissary of the gods, left here to do the gods’ will in their absence. I am… well, that’s complicated and not important right now, but suffice it to say that the gods made me how I am as well. The trouble is… the gods were not good people. Their emissary is not much better. He wants to collect all four Relics and use them to change the world, and not in a good way. I want to stop him.”

Sienna Khan regarded the witch with suspicion. “If we were talking to him right now instead of you, I bet he’d tell us the same thing. That you’re the evil one trying to do bad things to the world, and he’s trying to stop you. How can we know which one of you is telling the truth, if either?”

“Good thinking.” Salem smiled with approval. “If you choose not to believe a word I say, that’s up to you. You’re on the outside looking in. But you, Xuri…” She shifted her gaze to the young woman across from her. “I’m afraid you’re mixed up in all this whether you want to be or not. You don’t have the luxury of not choosing sides. And I realize I don’t have much to offer you besides words, which as Sienna said, could be lies. But I want to help you learn about yourself and your part in all this, and I can guarantee my counterpart would not be nearly as forthcoming.”

Yang scooted across the airship floor to sit next to Salem and put one arm around her. “And I’ll vouch for her, for whatever that’s worth. I worked for the other side for years, and my sister still does. He was grooming us to be his tools since before we even knew his name.”

“What is his name?” Xuri asked. “I’m sure I’ve never met him, but I feel like I should know.”

“He changes his name and even his face from time to time, to escape accountability for his actions,” Salem growled. “But one part is always constant: Oz. I’m sure you’ve heard of several of his aliases before. You know your history?” Xuri nodded. “Who was the last King of Vale, before and during the Great War? Oswald.”

Xuri’s eyes widened with recognition, and Salem continued her angry retelling of history. “Think of the Battle of Vacuo. The King of Vale went into battle with a crown atop his head.” Salem held up the silver crown, studded with jewels the same color as the emblem of Vale, then placed it back on her own head. “He carried a scepter.” She reached over to pick up the second Relic out of Yang’s lap. “And he fought with a sword.” Salem extended her free hand, palm up, toward Xuri. “The emissary of the gods had three out of four Relics, and he  _ personally _ killed over a thousand people that day.”

Salem snorted. “Sure, he ended the war. But the Mantle and Mistral forces were doomed anyway. Their armies and supplies had to journey halfway across the world, needing sea or air travel where the defenders from Vale could go by land. They both came from vastly different climates, significantly cooler than Vacuo. They didn’t have a chance. Oswald didn’t have to kill anyone, he just wanted to make a statement. Just like the gods were so fond of doing, before they left Remnant. And then–” Salem looked around at her audience. “Remember how the old king just vanished one day, after founding the Huntsman Academies. He changed his face, made himself younger, and set himself up to rule again. Can you see where this is going?”

Two blank looks greeted her. “Headmaster Ozpin!” Salem practically shouted. “There’s no kings anymore, so he took the next best position, leading Beacon Academy. Same half a name, same emerald green, same kingdom that he lived in before, appointed directly to headmaster despite having no formal record of either teaching or fighting… same old bastard who thinks he gets to dictate what the rest of the world thinks. And what happened to him? Disappeared without a trace, presumed dead, same as before. Funnily enough, his weapon always manages to disappear with him.”

Salem stopped and looked to Yang to continue. “He goes by Oscar now,” the girl said. “He looks like just an innocent kid, but it’s still Ozpin inside, no one else. Here, I’ve got pictures on my scroll.” Yang pulled the device out of her pocket and looked through her old photos to find a group shot of her entire team with the real Oscar back at Haven Academy, before he had been killed and his body taken over by the invading spirit of Ozpin. She zoomed in on the central smiling face and showed the picture to Xuri and Sienna. 

“That’s the great warrior-king, huh?” Xuri raised one eyebrow. “Cute kid. Of course, he’d look more convincing if he wasn’t holding an ornate cane with an obvious trigger mechanism on it.” She leaned back on her hands. “What’s one more impossible thing to believe today? Why not?”

“You’re really just going to accept everything we’re saying, just like that?” Yang gave a bemused shake of the head as she put her scroll away. “Man, you’re a lot more trusting than I was. Ozpin told us things in tiny bits and pieces and I damn near punched him out on multiple occasions, because I could always tell there was more he was holding back. I guess it’s better to hear it all at once.”

“Well, I always sort of suspected magic was real, since a professional Huntsman told me it wasn’t an Aura thing. You’re not a Maiden like me, but I saw you use that staff to drop a giant cube of stone on that boarbatusk.” Xuri shifted her attention to Salem. “And I saw you get mauled by an alpha and yet there’s not a mark on you. If you say you’re immortal, sure. There’s just one thing I want before I commit to helping you.” 

Salem and Yang waited politely for her to name her demand. Xuri gave one last glance around the ship, but Sienna sat silently as well, absorbed in her own thoughts. The zebra girl took a deep breath and declared, “I want to meet another Maiden. Someone who’s weird in exactly the same way as me. Show her to me face to face, let me see her eyes glow, and that will be enough. I’ll accept that everything you’ve said is true, no matter how strange.”

Salem met the young woman’s gaze evenly and spoke a single word in response: “Okay.” Turning to the fourth member of the meeting, she asked, “What about you, Sienna? I’d like to maintain good relations with the White Fang, but you don’t need to stick around with us if you don’t want to.”

“My only goal is to reclaim control of the White Fang and continue the fight for justice. I don’t expect to need help. But… you did bring me back from the dead and you’ve opened my eyes to potential new threats, so for that I thank you. We should go our separate ways for now, but if you ever require a favor from the White Fang, you have it.” Sienna held out a hand and Salem clasped it in her own to give a firm shake. 

Salem handed the scepter of Creation back to Yang. “Go make Sienna her own airship, would you? Mistral style, like this one.” The girl nodded and hopped down from her seat onto the grass outside. 

She stepped around the front of the existing ship and was met by Sienna on the other side, and the two walked together up to the open space between the village proper and their farmland. Yang greeted the handful of townspeople in the area, then instructed them to stand well clear of the space before her as she brought up the scepter to a ready position. 

“Feels weird to be using a Relic openly like this, but if Salem says it’s okay… I guess these people are used to magic enough from Xuri, or at least so isolated that word won’t get out.” 

Yang closed her eyes and focused on the form of a Mistral ship, just like the one she had spent many hours in on her way here not long ago. She knew what it looked like from the outside, with its graceful fins and pointed nose, propellers on the front and back. She imagined climbing inside and mentally walked around the interior of the ship, from the controls up front back through the loading bay and to the engines at the rear. 

And when she was ready, holding the complete image in her mind, she called on the Relic to make the second airship real. It popped into existence in the space before them and a rush of air crashed over Yang and Sienna, displaced by the ship’s sudden appearance. “Good luck, High Leader,” Yang said to the woman next to her, before offering her a handshake as well. 

“Thank you, Yang.” Sienna pulled her scroll from a pocket and opened it up. “We should exchange contact information, and then I will be on my way.” Yang opened up her own scroll and the pair swapped devices so each could input their details into the other’s directory. “Good luck to you too, on whatever strange quest you’re on. Send my regards to your boss-slash-girlfriend as well.” With that, Sienna pocketed her scroll again and jumped up into the airship, and disappeared into the forward cabin. 

The ship lifted off vertically, then once it was above the trees it accelerated to the east, quickly shrinking out of sight. Yang turned back to the original ship, only to be startled by the sudden appearance of Xuri next to her. “Hey,” the zebra girl greeted her. “We’re ready to head out too, I just need to tell everyone I’ll be away for a little while. There’s nothing for them to worry about – we probably cleared out every Grimm in a twenty mile radius today, so I wouldn’t expect another attack for at least a month. I’ll be right back.”

The protector of Izuruka and the neighboring villages smiled brightly and jogged toward the center square to flag down a few people she knew. Yang returned to the airship and found Salem in the driver’s seat, and an unfinished card game still set up on the table between her and the passenger chair. A small basin of Grimm liquid still rested in the corner, bubbling peacefully to itself so long as it remained undisturbed. 

“I guess we’re heading to Atlas?” Yang asked as she settled in. 

“Actually, no. I’ve asked Eve to meet us in Vale. I still intend to undo the destruction of the city, which means we’ll have to set up a scenario which could only have occurred naturally in the event of a stealthy liberation of the Relic of Choice. I still don’t know how exactly it works and we may not succeed on the first try, but my guess would be that we can jump back three weeks to the time of the Fall itself.”

“How is messing with the timeline there going to affect Xuri?”

Salem shrugged. “I don’t know. Going by what’s happened in previous jumps, I would expect her to still be with us, though we may have recruited her in an entirely different time and place than we remember.” She looked up sharply as sound came from the middle of the ship. “Ah, and here she is now.”

Xuri stepped into the cockpit and shut the door behind her. “Everything’s taken care of out there,” she announced. “I’m ready to meet another Maiden. You said her name was Eve?”

“That’s right,” Salem said. “Eve Silver. She’s the Winter Maiden, which means she was able to retrieve the Relic of Creation for us, undoing the seal that a previous Winter working for Ozpin had placed around it. She has full command of her powers and has been training them for about ten years.”

“Wait, her last name is  _ Silver? _ ” Though Yang had met the Winter Maiden before on a few occasions, it seemed she had missed hearing the other half of her name. “Does she have… you know…”

“Oh, no, definitely not. Believe me, I checked.” Salem turned the airship’s engines on and slowly lifted it up into the air. 

Xuri was confused. “Does she have what?”

“More weird magic stuff.” Yang chuckled briefly. “Not something that applies to any of us. Not even Salem.”

“None of us can wield that power, but Xuri can still be its target. Remember what happened to Cinder.” Salem met the girl’s uncertain gaze and warned her, “There is a very rare trait known as silver eyes, which can be either very beneficial or very dangerous, or both at once. The magic associated with silver eyes works against exactly two things: Grimm… and Maidens.” She left out mention of their third potential target, the intermediary between the other two, Salem herself. 

“Fortunately,” Salem continued, “I only know of one person at the moment who has silver eyes and knows how to use them. Unfortunately, it’s Yang’s sister, and she’s working with Oz. But fortunately again… she’s now a Maiden herself, which should make her hesitate to release that inner light.”

“Stopping Grimm is good…” Xuri spoke her thoughts aloud. “But as a Maiden I stop the Grimm too, and I wouldn’t want friendly fire from somebody trying to help me. But Grimm are everywhere and there’s only four Maidens…” She grimaced as she came to a conclusion. “Sounds inconvenient for me, for all of us involved with magic things, but if it means there’s another weapon against the Grimm, I can just deal with it.”

“It’s extremely rare and shouldn’t be an issue, especially with Ruby as the new Fall Maiden.” Yang smiled reassuringly at Xuri. “But I think that’s enough serious magic talk, don’t you?” She pointed the Relic of Creation to conjure up a third seat behind the table, and dealt out five cards to include Xuri in the ongoing game that she and Salem had left paused since their arrival in Izuruka. 

“We’ve got a while here on the way to Vale. Good luck, and try to keep up. Resume.” Yang fell silent, and she and Salem picked up the cards in front of them in unison only to discover that because they had swapped seats since their initial journey, they had also inadvertently swapped hands. Neither made any move to correct the accidental switch. 

Xuri glanced between them, unsure of her role in this unfamiliar game, and her puzzlement only grew as Yang took her turn. As Salem handed out a new card and both looked to the zebra girl to continue, Xuri could only smile nervously and resign herself to her fate. 

* * *

It was nearing sunset when the faux Mistral airship crossed over the outer wall of Vale. Large swathes of the city still appeared black from the air, husks of buildings that had fallen victim to fire or Grimm, or a deadly combination of both. Many of the main squares and plazas of the commercial district were filled with tents and makeshift shelters providing a splash of vibrant color amidst the sea of rooftops. 

In the distance, a great breach in the walls could be seen on the far side of Vale city, allowing Grimm from Mountain Glenn and the surrounding areas to pour into the agricultural part of the city, and continue northward unimpeded to wreak havoc on the industrial sector. Sturdy factory buildings held up well to most Grimm, but this only served to lower the region’s priority to the Huntsmen defending the city, and many workers had found themselves trapped inside with no supplies for several days following the Fall. 

Only the upper-class residential district was relatively unscathed, as the only borders it had with the outside world were the sea to three sides and a small section of Forever Fall forest to the northeast, and any Grimm approaching through the miles of red-leaved trees would have ample opportunity to strike at humanity along the northern wall long before reaching the rich, defenseless targets at its far end. 

Opposite it, on the eastern side, up on the plateau that separated Vale city from the woods around, the ruins of Beacon Academy still smoked, though not from fire. The Fall of Vale was the third major attack it had suffered in the span of only a year and a half. Ever since the first, during the disastrous Vytal Festival tournament, creatures of Grimm had trickled in daily as if in pilgrimage to the petrified dragon still clinging to the side of Beacon tower, and their deaths left a persistent haze over the school. Worse, the stone shell encasing the dragon was cracking, allowing more Grimm liquid to drop to the ground and spawn lesser beasts, and bestowing a pervasive worry upon the survivors that one day soon it might break free. 

When the final assault came three weeks ago – Salem’s last, successful push to capture the Relic of Choice – some students left to be with their families, but eighty percent had remained with their weapons ready to defend the school and the city, despite their training being woefully incomplete. Of those, eighty percent again were still living. A goliath Grimm had taken the long way around from Mountain Glenn to arrive at the top of the cliff, and that single centuries-old beast had claimed the lives of three full teams as well as the sometimes-beloved Professor Port before the combined efforts of the faculty and students had brought it down. 

Classes had been canceled indefinitely. Haven Academy had announced that any and all Beacon students were welcome to transfer immediately, followed by Shade offering advanced placement to any who stayed in Vale to defend and rebuild until the start of the next semester. Atlas gave no such proclamation, only the excuse that repeated acts of sabotage – in reality, the removal of the Relic of Creation a month before – had crippled the kingdom so much that they could barely support themselves, let alone refugees as well. That too was Salem’s doing, though the intent had not been to halt production, merely to protect the scepter while Ozpin and his team had been nearby. 

Now Choice had returned to Vale and brought Creation with it, while elsewhere in the city Knowledge was still held by the other side of this war between immortals. The airship bearing Salem and her agents coasted over the rooftops of eastern Vale, slowing gently as it made a slight curve toward the outer rim of the city just south of Beacon Academy. A commercial airfield came into view below and Salem radioed down to reserve one of the few docking spaces remaining under her usual false name and credentials. 

The trio stepped out to the ground below and were greeted by a single haggard worker who looked like he had been awake almost two days straight. Salem flashed her ID card with the words “Zai Lin, Huntress for the Council of Mistral, and my trainees,” and the man barely glanced at it before waving them past and wishing them good luck in their efforts. Salem led the way out of the airfield and set off down the deserted streets of Vale.

“My current mortal identity owns a house in each of the four kingdoms,” she explained. “It’s useful to have a local base of operations wherever I might need to be. I always try to maintain property within walking distance of an air base. It’s more convenient when I or a lieutenant have to come here, and also cheaper because of the noise nearby. We should be there in a couple minutes.”

“And the Winter Maiden is meeting us there?” 

“She may have arrived ahead of us. Eve had more distance to cover getting from Atlas to Vale, but she also has access to faster airships. I’ll warn you now, she may not be quite what you’re thinking of as another Maiden, but I do believe you’ll find her… impressive, to say the least.”

Salem led the way around a corner into what was clearly a more residential area. Rows of single-story houses on small but serviceable lots lined both sides of the street, lights beginning to flick on within as the sun dropped below the rooftops in the distance. “Eve is probably the one person in the world,” she continued, “apart from Oz or myself, of course, who I would consider capable of toppling a kingdom singlehandedly.”

Both Yang and Xuri stopped in shock for just a moment before hurrying to catch up. Salem only smiled as she pointed to a house up ahead on the left. “If I wanted to destroy Mistral, for example,” she spoke without looking back at the two girls following. “I could simply walk through the streets murdering every person I came across. I could laugh off any attempts to kill me, teleport out of any restraints, and as news of my rampage spread, the kingdom would fall to Grimm within a week. 

“Eve could do much the same thing. She is mortal, but is still extremely difficult to stop. The only way she’s died in all the alternate timelines I’ve been through is by someone surprising her with the Relic of Destruction. As a master of telekinesis she can also escape almost any bonds, because what is a lock except a mechanism that opens when certain pieces of it are moved in a particular way?” Salem walked up the three steps to the front door of the house, and stepped aside to wave one hand toward the lock. “Now, I’m curious, Xuri, how would  _ you _ open this without the key?”

The Summer Maiden leaned forward to examine the lock. “Looks normal from the outside,” she pronounced. “Probably a deadbolt on it, so… I guess I’d probably cut through the material of the door around the lock. A narrow beam of magic should do it.”

“Interesting.” Salem nodded. “You go around the problem, but still leave a sign that you were there. Yang tends to face things head on, and would likely punch the door open. Eve would manipulate it from within until it complied. The previous Fall Maiden, Cinder, would touch the lock and melt it, taking away any power it had to stand in her way. One of my other helpers, Mercury, would find whoever had the key and mug them. Doctor Watts would pick the lock.”

“What about you?” Xuri asked. 

Salem regarded her with a smirk and a single raised eyebrow. “I own the house,” she said simply, leaving it open to interpretation whether she meant only the particular case in front of them or if that was intended to serve as her general style of problem solving. “Of course, I wasn’t expecting to come here when I left home, so I don’t have the key on me. But that’s no issue.”

She held the silver scepter sideways so that the tip of its crystal rested over her other hand, and instantly conjured a replacement key from memory which fit perfectly into the lock. The door swung open and Salem led the way into the modest house, and took a seat on one end of the living room couch. She retrieved a scroll from her pocket and opened it to view her messages. 

“Eve says she’s fifteen minutes out… oh, but that was a little while ago already. We haven’t beat her by much.” Salem shrugged. “Not much to do but wait.” 

Yang’s scroll buzzed as well and she opened it, only to almost drop the device in shock. Eyes wide, she turned to Salem as she sat down on the other side of the sofa. “I just got a message from Ruby,” she said. “She noticed my signal nearby and wants to know if I’m okay and if we can see each other. What should I tell her?”

“Hmm. Well, tell her you’re okay, at least.” Salem weighed the consequences of allowing a face to face meeting with the silver-eyed girl. Ruby posed a significant threat to Salem’s operation and to her personal safety. Salem could take the opportunity to kill her, but she would lose Yang’s support, and likely Xuri’s as well. The Summer Maiden was the only one whose Relic was not yet in play, and it was imperative to keep her cooperation. And when she stopped to consider it, Salem found herself more hesitant than she expected, more than she would have liked, at the thought of no longer having an enthusiastic Yang by her side. 

And if Eve was present, she could nullify any serious threat. There was nothing to be lost from a meeting… no, that wasn’t quite true. Ozpin could steal Xuri from her, potentially by force if his honeyed words did not do the trick. But anyone else seemed safe enough. On the other hand, did Salem have anything to gain from a meeting with the enemy? Yang’s happiness, of course… was that enough? Or, since Yang had come around to her side, perhaps other members of her team could be convinced as well?

“Alright,” Salem said after her moment of silent contemplation. “Tell Ruby she can meet us here in maybe twenty or thirty minutes. The address is 289 Melechot Place, southeast side. She can bring Weiss with her,  _ maybe _ the other kids, but absolutely no Ozpin. I don’t want  _ him _ getting near any of us. Weapons are fine. After all, we’re armed too, so it’s only fair.”

“Thanks,” Yang said as she relayed the information to her sister. “I’ll just tell her there are some people here she should meet, but no names. You’re still in Huntress disguise, after all. Although…” She made a face. “They do know I’m working with you now. Whatever, it’s already sent.”

The sound of a door opening came from the next room, followed by the steps of high-heeled feet on the wooden floor. A woman in a long, dark gray cloak stepped into view, and as the door swung shut behind her, the deadbolt twisted of its own accord to seal the entrance to the house. The woman advanced to the very edge of the room where Salem and her two companions waited, then halted. She raised her hands in front of her chest, interlacing her fingers but keeping them all perfectly straight, and gave a sharp nod before returning her arms to her side. 

Salem gestured gently downward with one hand. “At ease,” she said. 

The newcomer extended her arms behind her and the hooded cloak lifted to slide off of her into the air, where it folded itself neatly and floated away to rest in another room. Beneath, she wore a form-fitting leather suit, solid black except for a small emblem over her heart, the same symbol repeated larger across her back. Two concentric circles, overlaid on them the torch of Atlas, but in place of the central gear of the kingdom’s symbol there was instead a sideways eye, four lines each on left and right connecting it to the outer rings. Below it, the torch’s base extended and widened into a kite, framed by four others in a downward fan, and the entire emblem faded from white at the top into the same deep burgundy that decorated Salem’s castle and her usual attire. 

It was Eve’s face which attracted the most attention. She looked to be in her mid thirties, with shining silver hair that fell straight to her chin and no further, and a prominent trio of parallel scars across the side of her nose and cheek. Around her head, just above her eyebrows and the tops of her ears, a thick ring of black plastic or maybe glass circled like a crown that had slipped too low. It appeared featureless except for a slight bulge outward in the middle, and formed a perfect circle touching at her temples and the back of her head, with a slight gap at each side. 

Yang slid to the middle of the couch to offer Eve her previous seat as the Winter Maiden stepped forth onto the carpeted floor of the living room, but the offer was neither accepted nor even acknowledged. Eve took a few steps into the room and stopped for a moment, staring straight ahead, then turned on the spot to sit down in the center of the shorter two-person couch on one side of the room, directly opposite Xuri in her padded chair. She kept her back straight and hands folded across her lap, and stared forward with a neutral expression. 

“So… Eve, is it?” Xuri broke the silence with a nervous smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard lots about you – well, about your powers – from Salem and Yang here.”

“Xuri, Summer Maiden. I have received a briefing on you as well. You wish to see a demonstration of my abilities.” It was a statement, not a question, but Xuri nodded anyway. The floor creaked loudly as the sofa on which Eve sat lifted, carrying the Maiden with it, to hover a foot above the carpet. “Is this sufficient?”

Xuri gaped in wonder at the display, but one detail nagged at her. “Why aren’t your eyes glowing?” she asked. “Mine always get the green fire around them when I use magic.” She closed her eyes briefly, and when she reopened them the wispy glow was there. 

“The glow is optional. It comes naturally and is often seen on Maidens who lack formal training, or who wish to make a statement to their opponents, but it may be suppressed with practice. You have already learned to create the effect without the use of magic. You can learn the opposite as well. It often pays to be undetected.”

Eve and her seat settled gently to the floor again, making only the slightest bump as the heavy couch landed back into the exact spot from which it had left. She stared, unblinking, directly at Xuri and a blue flare rose from the sides of her eyes. It cut off and then rose again, several times, while Eve’s eyes remained firmly open the entire time. Xuri watched, blinking to shut off her own green flame. 

“It is also not necessary to close one’s eyes as you do,” Eve stated. “Your magic, your Aura, and your body are all intertwined. To master one, you must master them all. Knowing your enemy is not enough; you must know yourself, or else you will forever be inefficient and subject to hostile exploitation.”

Though the Winter Maiden’s words were stern, there was no judgement in her voice, only the statement of facts, and Xuri did not feel nearly as uncomfortable in the presence of her highly trained counterpart as she had expected she would. “Would… would you be willing to teach me? All about magic, how to use it better? All I know is what I’ve managed to figure out by myself.”

“If that is Salem’s wish.” 

Suddenly Xuri felt sheepish for asking, and looked over to Salem, who until now had been silently watching the two Maidens’ interaction. Salem smiled slightly and addressed Xuri. “Recovering the Relics remains a priority, but as a longer term goal, yes, Eve can train you in magic.”

Xuri grinned widely and clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Oh, this is so exciting! Thank you, both of you. All three of you. I’m so glad you found me.” She stopped for a moment, smiling too hard to even speak. “I can’t wait to have a real teacher, someone who knows all about my powers and can help me… and who doesn’t mind that I’m a Faunus.” Her jubilation faded as she recalled why she had decided against attending Shade years ago, but it returned just as quickly. Addressing Salem she announced, “Yes, I will help you find your Relic.”

“Good,” Eve said flatly, her face still neutral even as everyone around her was overjoyed with the recent developments. “Now, in order to train you, I will need to know your current level of expertise, your fighting style, and any specific goals you might have. But first, perhaps a better demonstration of what is possible, if you keep pushing the limits of your power further.” 

Eve fell silent and stood up to take two long steps out into the center of the room, where she remained with her eyes focused straight ahead on the far wall, and arms down by her sides. Nothing seemed to happen for a long moment, until a small cardboard box floated in from elsewhere in the house and settled to the floor by her feet. Its lid lifted and floated through the air to hang in front of Xuri, showing her an image of a sea of wildflowers with the words “150 piece jigsaw puzzle” across the top. 

Puzzle pieces floated one by one up from the box, in a long single file stream that wrapped into a circle all the way around Eve’s head and kept winding itself up, until every last piece hung in a great cloud with the Winter Maiden at its center. The box lid returned to her as well, resting in front of her below the ring, and her eyes flicked downward to focus on the image it displayed. 

One by one, matching pieces moved through the air to interlock their edges, though many of these pairs and growing segments remained behind the woman’s head. Eve never turned, never moved a muscle even as she manipulated so many tiny objects, all independently of one another. Even as larger sections came together, she seemed to have no preference for maintaining them in front of her brown, non-glowing eyes. 

“The most skilled user of magic is not the one who produces the most power, but the one who places her power where it can be most effective,” Eve proclaimed. “Magic is an exercise in precision. Every enemy has its weak points. If you can strike it there, you achieve victory at a lesser cost. Everything that is large is made up of smaller parts. If you can master the small, then you have mastered everything.”

Xuri opened her scroll and began furiously typing into it. “Keep going,” she said. “I’m just taking notes here.”

“A battlefield never consists solely of you and an enemy. Whether you face multiple combatants or not, you must learn to observe and interact with the full environment around you. The more places you can manifest your will at once, the more foes it takes to stop you. I personally choose to augment myself with full three hundred sixty degree vision, so that I may more effectively watch and control the space around me.” Eve made no gesture or indication that she was referring to the black ring around her head, but it was clear that was the only explanation. 

“Obviously, you should start with the basics and work up. I do not expect you to master magic in a day. Practice precision, practice multitasking, and those skills will aid you in whatever specialty you eventually choose. Leave the sensory augments for when you are ready, when you can handle everything in your field of awareness and then more.” 

Eve brought the final loose pieces onto the edges of her larger chunks, and began moving whole sections together. Each group stayed together as a flat plane in the air, but in a way this was even more impressive, as Eve surely still had to control each puzzle piece individually as she moved and rotated sections as a single unit. Within moments the full puzzle hung in the air before her, and the box lid settled to the ground as Eve brought the completed image around to show it up close to each of the women watching her. 

A knock came at the door, and all except Eve startled slightly at the sudden noise. The Winter Maiden did not even twitch, remaining stock still as she always was, in complete mastery over her own body. “Is that Ruby?” Yang asked aloud. “She’s a little early, isn’t she?”

“She is,” Salem said. “But she’s here, so you should let her in.” Yang jumped up to step carefully around Eve and her display to go to the front door. 

“How do you  _ do _ that?” Xuri asked, still focused on Eve. “How do you not even flinch, no matter what?”

“As with everything, practice. As a beginner, it may help to be minorly dissociating, so you may view your body and its reactions from what approaches an outside perspective. But take care not to drift off entirely.”

Salem motioned to the woman standing in the middle of the room. “Eve, put that away and sit here.” She waved a hand toward the opposite end of the sofa, leaving room for Yang to return to the center spot and opening up the shorter couch for their guest. 

A ripple passed over the jigsaw puzzle from one corner, pieces separating back out as individuals before spiraling down into the box. Eve turned away and moved to sit down before the lid was even shut and she relaxed as much as she seemed to be capable of, to await the two new people she could sense beyond the door. 

Yang pulled open the door and barely registered the two familiar faces outside before she was tackled into a hug. “Yang!” her sister squealed, and a flood of words followed as Ruby let out all her pent-up emotion. “It’s so good to see you again, you’re okay, we’ve been so worried about you, even though I know you can take care of yourself and I told them that but we’ve been worried anyway because it’s crazy out there, you’ve seen the city, and you’ve been out on your own unless you’re really with  _ her _ but that would be crazy, you’re just mad at Ozpin and I kind of am too, he’s been difficult these days but it’s okay, you’re okay, I–”

Ruby stopped to take in a huge breath of air, and Yang cut in to interrupt before the flow began again. “I’ve missed you too, Ruby. And you, Weiss.” She extended one arm toward the other member of her former team, to include her in the group hug. 

Weiss stepped in to join the others in the doorway and smiled slightly as she put an arm around Yang. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, Yang.” Her left hand still gripped her rapier tightly even as she rested her head on the other girl’s shoulder. “But I’m still not used to seeing you with black hair. And why did we have to meet out here? You know where we’ve been living, right?”

“Not sure I do, actually, but it’s okay.” Yang released the others from her embrace and waved for them to follow. “Come on in. There’s some people you should meet.” She led the way to the living room where her new companions waited, and gestured to the open couch as she sat down between Salem and Eve. 

Ruby immediately took an interest in Xuri. “Ooh, you’re really pretty…” Xuri blushed, and Ruby realized what she had said and tried to cover for herself. “I mean, you two are pretty too! It’s just… I’m sorry, I’m Ruby Rose. What are your names?”

Weiss sidled closer to murmur into her teammate’s ear. “Ruby… I think…” Either Ruby ignored her or she didn’t hear, as she moved to shake Xuri’s hand and be formally introduced. 

“Nice to meet you, Ruby. I’m Xuri.” The Summer Maiden smiled warmly and shifted her gaze to Weiss, but the other girl was staring intently toward Salem. 

“Ruby…” Weiss’s warning came again, more stringent now as her partner moved to offer a handshake to the immortal witch. “Don’t you see who that is?!” She raised her free hand and conjured a white glyph under Ruby’s feet, and with a twitch of two fingers sent her forcefully backward. Another gesture raised a small glyph in the air, centered over Salem’s chest, and Weiss raised her weapon in preparation to glide forward and thrust the narrow blade exactly where her Semblance marked. 

Before Weiss had moved even six inches out of her initial combat stance, she froze in place, rapier still at the ready, leaning forward as if she was sprinting toward a target even as she remained in place. A cold voice came from the stiff, black-suited woman nearby, a single word of warning, made all the more threatening by its calm, dispassionate delivery: “Don’t.”

Salem glanced down at the glyph still hovering over her chest, then back up to Weiss. “You do know I can’t be killed, right?” Next to the frozen Ice Queen, Ruby’s eyes widened in recognition at last. Salem stood and crossed the room to extend a hand to Ruby; Weiss’s eyes tracked her but every muscle in her body remained thoroughly locked in place. “Greetings, Ruby Rose. I am Salem. Welcome to this  _ nonviolent _ gathering.”

Weiss’s fingers loosened against her will, and the sword dropped from her hand. Once Salem’s cordial greeting had been received, she turned to go back to her seat next to Yang, passing by Weiss without offering her the same. “Again, welcome,” she said. “You’ve met Xuri. This is Eve. Please, take a seat, both of you. I don’t mean you any harm. It’s not often I get to meet Ozpin’s leading pawns in person.”

The telekinetic grip faded from Weiss’s head and she snarled at Salem, “What have you done to me?” Her body remained frozen, so Ruby picked up the fallen sword instead and moved halfway toward an open seat, stopping to take Weiss’s hand. 

Eve turned her head, the first time she had moved since the two visitors had arrived. She stared directly at Weiss, and a blue flame rose from the corners of her eyes. The two girls gasped. “A Maiden!” 

“That’s right.” Salem gestured toward Eve as if showing her off. “Fall, meet Winter. Winter, meet yet another Fall… and you can let Weiss go now.” The magic faded and Weiss stumbled forward, off balance, but was caught by Ruby’s hand and led to her seat. 

“So Yang really is working with Salem now,” Weiss muttered to her partner. She looked up at Yang and accused, “What’s happened to you? We didn’t want to believe it, even after you attacked Ozpin. But this… Yang, why?”

Yang hung her head and took a deep breath before speaking, not quite meeting Weiss’s gaze. “Salem isn’t evil,” she said. 

“What do you mean, she isn’t evil? She caused the Fall of Vale!”

Yang’s head snapped up to glare at her former teammate. “She’s here today to  _ undo _ the Fall of Vale. We all are. She’s done evil things in the past, that’s true, but it was necessary to stop Ozpin from doing something even worse. And now that that threat is gone…” Yang shuffled closer and leaned against Salem’s side to drape one arm around the witch’s shoulders. “There’s no need to be evil anymore, so she’s not. She’s using the Relics to make the world better.”

“Additionally,” Eve spoke up, “Salem is responsible for much of the technological growth and innovation in Atlas, particularly in the last nine years. Having grown up there amidst the marvels, you could be grateful.”

Weiss sneered at her. “You don’t know the first thing about my childhood.” She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “And, I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but it’s generally considered polite to look at someone when you’re speaking to them.”

“I am looking at you.” Eve stated the fact without clarification, her face still directed toward the middle of the room where Weiss had previously been. 

Yang stepped in to clarify. “With your biological eyes, is what she means.” 

Eve turned to gaze coolly at the girl who had challenged her. “This is inefficient use of my body’s energy.”

Weiss rolled her eyes. “Atlas Special Operative, right? You act like my sister, but even worse.” 

“That’s beside the point!” Ruby slammed her fists down on her legs. “All of it! We came here to see Yang, not to argue. My sister is alive and well, and that’s more important than what side she’s on in this stupid war!”

Ruby sighed heavily and put her face in one hand. “I got into all this because I wanted to help people. That’s why I trained to be a Huntress. That’s what led me to meet Ozpin. And that’s still all I really care about. I want people to be alive, and happy, and living their best lives.” Her voice rose in both pitch and volume as she became more animated, gesturing so wildly by the end that Weiss had to lean away lest she be accidentally hit. Across the room, Xuri watched quietly and nodded slightly with agreement as Ruby spoke. Salem merely listened politely, her face unreadable. 

“That means if Salem is killing people, I want her stopped. If Ozpin is killing people, I want him stopped too. That’s all that matters. Life! Harmony! Peace! That’s what I – agh!” Her voice cut off suddenly and she put a hand to her face. “What’s happening? Why can’t I open my eyes?”

“Sorry, just a safety precaution.” Salem’s voice carried clearly even as Ruby’s eyes remained firmly pinned shut. “You were getting rather passionate about the protection of life, and there are multiple people here who could be hurt by an accidental discharge of your light.”

“So stop moving your head so much,” Eve added. “Eyelids can be a tricky thing to keep hold of, and you wouldn’t want me to have an accident either.”

Ruby froze in place. “Of course,” she said, her voice neutral as she tried to keep as still as possible. “Silver eyes work on all Maidens, don’t they? I thought it was because Cinder had that Grimm arm at first, but she didn’t have that yet when I first hit her at Beacon. And now I’m the new Fall Maiden myself… I’ll be careful.”

She slowly lowered herself to lean against the back of her seat. “Yang…” she said, “You know I love you, right? And I always will, no matter what. I don’t want to let some feud between immortals tear our team, our family, apart. But I just don’t understand. You know what Salem is like. What she’s done. I can see wanting to get away from Ozpin. He’s not the good person we once thought he was. But turning to Salem’s side? You seem happy and that’s good, but… why?”

Yang opened her mouth to answer, but Salem held up her hand to make her pause. Turning away from both Ruby and Yang, she prompted the last member of the gathering. “Xuri, tell these young Huntresses about me. From the time we first met.” She made another quick gesture to Eve, and the magical weight on Ruby’s eyelids lifted. 

Xuri blanched at being put on the spot like this, but regained her composure soon enough. “Uh, well, I’ve only known Salem for a day. She and Yang showed up in my home village, north of the kingdom. They’d heard about me somehow and came looking, because apparently I’m the only person who can get them another one of these magic Relics.” 

“Wait.” Ruby fixed her with an incredulous stare. “ _ You’re _ a Maiden too?” She paused for a moment, mouthing words to herself as she ran through the list by process of elimination. “You’re Summer? We’ve been looking for you too!” 

“Never knew I was so popular.” Xuri laughed nervously and turned on her green eye glow for a few seconds, then let it flicker out. “Anyway, those two showed up with a third woman, Sienna, and all they said was they were Huntresses and wanted to talk to me. But before we could talk, the Grimm showed up – a massive attack, more than I’ve ever fought off before. I’m not sure I would have made it without them. 

“All of them, Salem included, fought their hardest to save people they’d never even met. And I could tell, Sienna didn’t know them well either, but Yang and Salem were an amazing team. They each know how the other thinks and they trust each other, it’s obvious from watching them fight. Salem put herself in the way of a sphinx’s fire breath to protect Yang, and that might have saved her life.”

“Because I take care of my people,” Salem cut in. “I may have fewer allies than Oz does, but I treat them better. I don’t keep endless secrets from them. I patch them up after  _ you _ cut their arms or tails off. And if necessary, I will take a fatal hit in their stead, because I know I can get back up again.”

Yang jumped in as well to voice her agreement, further derailing Xuri’s story. “That’s right. Salem personally saved me, just this afternoon. Ozpin would never do something like that. He’s proven he won’t step in to help twice over.” 

“What do you mean?” Weiss regarded Yang with suspicion, but there was a note of genuine questioning in her voice. 

“Ozpin could have prevented Pyrrha’s death. We didn’t know it then, but he has magic too. He let Cinder beat him because his disguise, his secrets, were worth more to him than her life. But worse…” Yang rubbed at one eye, then clenched her hand into a fist. “Ozpin could have prevented Blake’s death. But he let those military thugs murder her because his connection with General Ironwood was more important to him than her life.”

Yang sniffled as she began to tear up again, only to suddenly stiffen in shock as she felt Salem’s hand come to rest over her own. She gratefully accepted the comforting touch, and turned her hand over to interlace their fingers. Across the room, Weiss squinted at the pair, then turned to give Ruby a pointed look. 

“You don’t have to go through this again,” Salem murmured softly. “I saw how hard it was for you at the briefing this morning.”

“They need to hear. And so does Xuri.” Yang looked up sharply, her eyes filled with rage to drown out her grief. “What did Ozpin tell you about the night Blake died?” she demanded. 

“Uh, you three went out scouting, and split up to cover more ground? Blake got in over her head and called you, but you couldn’t reach her in time.” Ruby dredged up her own painful memories of that fateful evening in Atlas and told what she could, but her voice wavered with doubt. “Ozpin carried her back to us. He said you’d run off but you’d be back soon, and… then you never came home.”

“We waited for you for  _ days, _ ” Weiss interjected. “We sent out search parties. Ren thought you might have killed yourself!” 

“We gave Blake a funeral and you weren’t even there!” The first tears welled up in the corners of Ruby’s eyes too now. “We’re your friends! And I know Blake was even more than that, to you. How could you just leave everyone like that?”

Yang’s free hand curled into a fist and she gave a tense squeeze with the other. “Ozpin lied to you,” she growled. “We  _ did _ get to Blake in time. We could have saved her, but instead the last thing she saw was Ozpin holding me down so I couldn’t go rip those bigots’ spines out like they deserved. It’s just as much Ozpin’s fault as if he’d been part of the mob with them.”

“Yang lost a woman who was precious to her when Oz refused to help,” Salem said. “Does that sound like anyone else you know? Someone you met at Haven, perhaps?” 

“Hazel…” Ruby knew the story of the giant’s sister, how Ozpin had allowed her to die under his direct supervision and so Hazel had come to join the other team. 

“Yang lost her first love unfairly and the closest thing to a god refused to help. Does  _ that _ sound like anyone else you know? I’ve been told about your experience with Jinn.”

Suddenly Yang and Salem’s closeness made perfect sense to both the newcomers. “We’re… going to have a long talk with Ozpin after this.” Ruby glanced down at her own side but did not find the lamp she was so accustomed to having there. “I almost wish I’d brought the Relic now instead of leaving it with Jaune. I mean, I’m not saying we don’t believe you, it’s just…” She shrugged helplessly. “What are we supposed to do now?”

It was time for Salem to make her play. “Would you be willing to assist us in undoing the Fall of Vale?” There was a moment of silence all around as Ruby and Weiss looked at each other, the same thoughts running through each of their heads but neither voicing them aloud. “I have come to regret the destruction I caused here,” Salem continued. “It was unnecessary. With the Relic of Choice I can roll back time and choose differently, but it requires some setup to work as I intend. Will you come with me to Beacon?”

“…How does that work?” Weiss narrowed her eyes at the witch, still not quite ready to believe she was anything but the scheming killer that they had fought against for so long. 

“Simple, really. All you’d have to do is stand in a specific spot while I use the Relic. I’ll be calling on the power of the gods to say ‘remember when I ordered a large scale assault on Vale? Shift us into a timeline where I chose  _ not _ to do that’ and then the scene we’re reenacting becomes real. If we’re careful, we can make all this–” Salem gestured all around, as if looking out on the ruined city through the house’s walls. “–have never happened at all.”

“But… why would you do that?” Weiss turned to her partner. “You can’t seriously believe this, right, Ruby? There’s got to be some evil plan we’re not seeing yet.”

“I’m doing it because I’m  _ trying _ to become a better person!” Salem exclaimed, gesticulating wildly before taking a deep breath to calm herself. 

“Does it matter if there’s some evil plan?” Ruby replied to Weiss’s question. “Even if there is, saving lives is saving lives! If something bad happens later we’ll work to stop it, as we would anyway. We have the opportunity to help save hundreds of people, and we can’t just stand by and not take that chance.” She reached out to take Weiss’s hand and stared into her partner’s eyes. “We can’t let ourselves start to become like Ozpin.”

“So we’re just supposed to trust Salem? Take her at her word?”

“We trust  _ Yang. _ But… I do think Salem sounds sincere about wanting to fix Vale.” Ruby looked up and fixed her silver eyes upon the witch. “I will help you,” she declared. “But only tonight. After this, Weiss and I go back to the way things were. I don’t know if we’ll stay with Ozpin either after what Yang told us… but we’ve done things our own way before. Our only side in all of this is Remnant’s side. Because a Huntress is sworn to protect the people.”

“Well said.” Salem stood up from her seat. “And I accept your terms. No sense wasting time, now. Let’s all go to Beacon.” Yang and Eve stood as well, followed quickly by Xuri. “Oh, and before I forget… Eve, when next you are in Atlas, find the humans who murdered Blake Belladonna. I believe you’re more than capable of, what was it, ripping those bigots’ spines out like they deserve?”

“It shall be done.” If Eve had reservations about the revenge order, she didn’t show it. But neither did she cackle with glee as Tyrian would at the thought of murder. Eve was a tool for the will of Salem first, the glory of Atlas second, and any concerns of morality or emotion a very distant third. Where she had come from, and how such a kind and selfless woman had become the terrifying angel of death she was today, only Salem knew. 

Salem swept out of the room with Eve at her heels, and the rest of the gathering followed in a looser crowd. Xuri fell in with Yang and her friends and asked in a low voice, “She’s not  _ really _ going to pull those people’s bones out with her telekinesis, right?”

“She almost certainly is.” Weiss sounded disgusted with the whole situation. “It’s a bit hard to believe Salem really wants to redeem herself when she orders multiple murders right in front of us. Even if they do deserve it.” 

“I still don’t quite know what I’ve gotten myself into here,” Xuri admitted. “All I know is she saved Yang and helped protect my village, and she’s having Eve teach me better magic. It’s a lot to take in, all this about Maidens and Relics and gods, even now that I’ve met other people with magic like mine. I kind of want to just get the Relic she says is linked to me and then go home and be done with it all.”

“I’d rather she not have any Relics,” Ruby said as the last of the gathering filed out of the house and the door swung shut and locked itself behind them. “But if this is what she wants to do with Choice, I can’t really think of a better use for that kind of power. If I had three wishes, saving Vale would absolutely be one of them.” 

“I’m glad you two are coming,” Yang told her old friends. “This isn’t the first time Salem has used the Relic of Choice, you know. She’s told me about the original timeline she lived through before starting to change things, and it was  _ unbelievably  _ bad. She’s already undone the conquest of Vacuo by Atlas. I can’t prove anything since, you know, it’s technically never happened now, but believe me when I say things could be a lot worse than what we’ve got now.” Reversing the destruction of Vacuo was an accident brought on by Salem’s unexpected jump backward in time, but it was still true that the desert kingdom was currently in perfect shape, so far undisturbed by magic or war. 

“I’m pretty sure the only decent thing about that worst version of history was the team names we had there,” Yang continued. “Apparently at the end it came down to a Team Onyx versus a Team White – but we were the Onyx and Salem’s team was White. Weiss, Nora, Yang, and Xuri, against Watts, Hazel, Tyrian, and Eve. Perfectly opposing colors, which wiped each other out with the alternate versions of me and Hazel as the sole survivors.”

“You fought Eve?” After seeing the Winter Maiden deftly manipulate over a hundred objects at once with her magic, Xuri was quite impressed. She imagined the same feat with a swarm of tiny blades, and shuddered as she climbed aboard Salem’s airship. 

“It wasn’t  _ me _ ,” Yang clarified. “Just someone I could have become but won’t now, which is a very good thing.” She held the door open to the front cabin so everyone could gather behind the control seats as Salem gently brought the airship out of its parking bay and lifted off. “Besides, we’ve got an even better team name now. Look at us: Salem, Eve, Xuri, and Yang. We’re Team Sexy, and it is  _ absolutely _ accurate.”

The airship took a sharp jerk to the left as Salem nearly doubled over with laughter. “You just  _ had _ to come up with that and say it, didn’t you? I’m never going to get that out of my head now.” 

“Well, it’s true!” Ruby smiled brightly and Xuri, already blushing, turned away to hide her face. “You’re all very pretty!”

“Ruby, could you maybe  _ not _ hit on the enemy?” Weiss did her best to sound irritated, but there was an undeniable note of jealousy in her voice. 

“And so is my wonderful teammate, girlfriend, and BFF, Weiss!” Ruby tilted her head and flashed another wide grin. Weiss rolled her eyes, but slid over half a step to take her partner’s hand. 

“That’s enough…. We’ll be at Beacon momentarily.” Salem spun her chair around to face the crowd while the airship rose straight upward on its own, heading for the top of the tall cliff where the Huntsman Academy stood. “Let’s go over how all this will work. I will use the Relic to shift us into a timeline where I never ordered an attack on the city, but it will naturally ensure that I still have the Relic then because, I don’t know, time paradoxes or something. It’s our job now to set up a situation that would occur naturally in such a timeline, to help guide the Relic to the kind of change we want.”

She turned back toward the front to guide the ship again, but continued speaking to the group. “My best idea is to set things up like the night of the Fall itself and expect we’ll see the present day set back to that time. Ruby and Weiss, you two show up with Qrow and Ozpin as before, but instead of being stopped by Hazel and Tyrian, you’ll have been stopped by Eve. She lets you go ahead to the vault but keeps Ozpin outside.” 

Salem hefted the silver scepter she still carried and handed it to her stoic, silver-haired lieutenant. “Eve, you’re the only natural choice for holding the Relic of Creation. You can keep it safe even face to face with Ozpin, right?”

“I can. If necessary, I will knock him unconscious via oxygen deprivation, but I will not kill him unless you command it.” 

“Wait, that thing is another Relic?” Weiss suddenly took a renewed interest in the ornate staff. “I thought it was just like, your weapon or something.”

“Eve is the Winter Maiden and she lives in Atlas. What did you expect?” Salem gently landed the airship in the front courtyard of Beacon Academy, a short ways in front of the large statue depicting a victory over Grimm. “So, you three will get out here. In the new timeline, Eve lets you through, you go to the vault but can’t open the door without Oz there. Eventually you leave there, wondering what went wrong, and while you come back out to meet Ozpin, I slip in undetected to give the second half of the key. Yang will be with me there. Beacon will still be in session at the time, and I’ll need her to act as part of my disguise.”

“What about me?” Xuri asked. “I wasn’t in Vale at all when all this happened. Where do I go?”

“Just stay with the airship. This isn’t going to be perfect since we don’t have Qrow and Oz here, but it should be close enough. Ideally I’d want Hazel with the ship too since he’s my best pilot, but he’s currently in Vacuo so we’ll just have to do without. Everyone ready?”

Weiss shrugged. “I guess so. Come on, Ruby, let’s go stand around with the creepy lady for a while and hope we’re not being tricked.” She waited in the doorway for her partner to join her. 

“Alright. Good luck, Yang. See you around!” Ruby waved, then went to follow Weiss. Eve stood up from the copilot seat and silently trailed the pair as they left the airship. 

Moments later the ship took off again and glided low to the ground down the wide entrance to the school. Salem parked it again at the mouth of a side street, as soon as the tree-lined walkways became too narrow to support the Mistral ship’s wide fins. “We’ll walk from here,” Salem announced. “Xuri, just sit tight and everything should be better soon.”

Salem and Yang left the airship behind and walked through the cool night air toward the central administrative building of Beacon Academy. Many of the streetlights were broken or missing entirely, but the soft moonlight was enough for them to find their way easily. Above them, the Grimm dragon still clung to the side of the main tower, frozen in stone just where Ruby had left it almost two years earlier. Its fearsome form was silhouetted in black against the deep blue sky, a literal beacon to the surrounding Grimm, a constant reminder that the Academy and the kingdom it belonged to remained in danger. 

The streets were empty, the school abandoned except for the periodic Huntsman patrols wandering the grounds, and even those typically stayed near the borders to intercept Grimm on their way in from the forest beyond. A live feed streamed from a camera on a nearby tower notified Beacon’s protectors when another mass of Grimm liquid looked ready to drop from between the everlasting dragon’s cracked stone scales. 

The door to the tower was unlocked. Yang led the way to the elevators on one side of the main auditorium, renovated in a slightly different style after Cinder had blasted her way straight through the old one on her way up the tower, that night so long ago. She held up her scroll to the keypad and the automated system woke from its dormancy to recognize her as a Beacon student, but when she pushed the button for the lowest level, the vault far below the school, the elevator balked. 

“It wants a passcode,” Yang said. “Four digits, something Ozpin would remember. Any guesses?”

“I know it. Took me a few tries the first time, but it’s pretty straightforward. Put in the word ‘Fall’ like it’s on a scroll keypad. Three two five five.” 

Yang entered the code and the elevator’s tiny screen blinked green and showed an emblem of interlocking gears, and a moment later it shuddered and began to move downward. “Well that was easy,” she remarked. 

“Yeah. I put in ‘Ozma’ first and that didn’t work. Then I tried to calculate out his birth year on the current calendar, but that’s five digits plus a negative sign. ‘Vault’ is too long as well, and so is ‘Choice’, but the Maiden who opens the Choice vault? That’s four letters.”

The elevator came to a stop at the lower floor and the doors slid open to reveal a familiar wide hallway, its marble floors still lit by perpetually burning torches of green flame. Yang and Salem walked out to where a huge circular design covered the floor from wall to wall, on the intersection between the entrance hallway and another path crossing it. Salem confidently turned left down the identical passageway. 

“This place is huge,” Yang said, gazing up at the high ceiling as she walked. “Even bigger than the vault below Haven. Why is there so much down here?”

“Part of the protections around Choice,” Salem replied. “It’s a maze down here. Every intersection looks identical, always four paths, and it seems to go on forever. It’s not actually that big, but there’s magic that connects different parts together in unintuitive ways. Someone could wander for hours and not find the vault or the way back up.”

“Then how do you know where you’re going? And how did Ruby and Weiss get in here before?”

“Look at the designs on the floor at each junction. They’re not quite symmetrical.” Salem halted at the edge of one of the large circles and pointed down to her right. “There’s always two of the four parts a little misaligned, marking a path from the elevator to the Relic. Not too hard to figure out, if you know the sort of thing Ozpin likes. Alternatively, just memorize the sequence left right left straight right, and you’re there.”

Salem led the way through one cavernous hall after another until finally the vault’s door stood before them, wide open. Yang looked through at the endless sandy expanse, an identical view to the one she had seen at Haven. Low dunes stretched on as far as the eye could see, fading in the distance to the same blank white of the sky, like an unfinished canvas with only the first base layer of a world painted upon it. The inner frame of the door, if it could really be considered  _ in _ , shimmered around the edges like its outline was not quite stable, almost as if the whole realm could come crashing down into nothingness at the slightest provocation. 

Both women shivered at the sight of it. “I don’t like that place,” Salem murmured. “It feels  _ wrong _ . It’s not part of Remnant. The way you get all fuzzy in there… I almost feel like it could kill me, if I went too far inside. Like everything’s just coming apart at the seams. It feels…” Salem grimaced. “It feels  _ godly _ , that’s what it is.”

“Yeah…” Yang recalled her own experience entering a vault, and the unsettling feeling that had stuck with her for a while even after leaving it. “Godly is right. In Jinn’s vision, I saw the same blurriness around Ozma when the God of Light brought him out of the afterlife. He said it was ‘between worlds’. I want to know how Ozpin made this place, or made the doors to it anyway. They can’t be older than the schools. They certainly can’t be older than the Maidens, and those didn’t exist until well after the gods left.”

“I have no idea how he did it, and that scares me. I’m fairly certain I couldn’t do the same. What if the gods sent him back with some new magic he never had in his first life?” Salem shook her head and turned her back to the open door. “Once all four Relics are out of there, I want that place destroyed. Or at the very least, sealed and the key destroyed.”

“Ozpin once said that the appropriate Maiden can close the doors again, but I’m not sure how. She can’t exactly put her hand on it when the door isn’t there anymore. It doesn’t really matter right now though.” Yang turned away from the strange, unformed realm as well, and slipped her hand into Salem’s as they both stared down the seemingly endless hall in front of the vault. 

Salem smiled and made no attempt to pull away. “You know,” she said, “I may not be the Salem who’s native to this timeline, but I’m starting to think she had the right idea. I like having you around, Yang. Having you on my team. Even if it means I have to hold back on the violence against Ozpin because many of your friends are with him.”

She took in a deep breath and let it out in silence. “I do get lonely in that castle,” she finally continued. “Nobody ever speaks to me except on official business. No one comes just to socialize. Except you, apparently. Now, I’m sure I probably haven’t been very inviting, but nobody has even  _ tried. _

“They’re all scared, I suppose. But not you. You don’t put me on a pedestal like everyone else. Sure, I’m an immortal witch and I personally chased the gods away from Remnant, but I’m just another person to you. You know my history. You know me better than any other lieutenant I’ve ever had. And I guess that lets you do things that no one else has ever had the courage to try.”

“A pedestal…” Yang gazed off into the distance as she slipped her hand free to put it around Salem’s waist instead. “I remember something similar from my Beacon days. You know Pyrrha Nikos?” 

Salem laughed briefly. “Oh, yes. I met her briefly in an alternate timeline, between my native one and here. Apparently another me had the bright idea to resurrect her and magically compel her to fight for me.”

“Pyrrha always complained about the exact same thing. Everyone thought she was untouchable, way out of their league, not worth any attempt at making contact. Well, everyone but Weiss. She thought she was in the same league. But for Pyrrha, the solution was the opposite. Jaune was the only one who had no idea who she was, and so he thought of Pyrrha as just another person, to be friendly with like anyone else.”

Yang took a half-step to turn slightly toward Salem, and the witch made a similar move as she shifted her weight and wrapped an arm around Yang’s shoulders. “Look who’s around you now,” Yang said. “I like you because I know you better than all your other people. Xuri and Sienna like you because they’ve never heard of you and are just going off this single day. And if you’ve got support on both ends of that spectrum, I bet people in the middle could like you too. If you really commit to becoming less violent, and helping the people of Remnant instead of driving them apart… I don’t think you’d ever have to be lacking in friends again.”

Yang turned her head to look directly at Salem, and paused a moment while Salem returned her gaze. “I know I wouldn’t ever want to leave you,” she breathed. 

The two women looked into each other’s eyes from mere inches apart, neither moving a muscle as they drank in the sight. The corners of Yang’s mouth turned upward in a dreamy smile and she closed her eyes in a slow blink before returning to gaze upon Salem’s face again. The witch’s head tilted downward ever so slightly, a barely perceptible movement that brought her just that little bit closer to her chosen partner. 

Yang’s hand pressed a little harder onto Salem’s waist, drawing the pair into each other even as their bodies were already nestled together in their side embrace. A moment passed, just a heartbeat’s length, and then the tension between them melted away as both leaned in at once to press their lips against the other’s. As if possessed by a singular will across two bodies, Yang and Salem reached up in unison and tangled their fingers in each other’s long, thick hair.

For a while, it was as if none of the cares of the world existed anymore, none of the worries over Relics or Maidens, over strategy and alliances, for the eternal war was on hold to make way for a brief time of bliss. All that mattered were two women who had found each other and jointly patched up their wounded hearts. The Huntress who had once shone like the sun, before trauma had brought a shadow over her soul, and the witch in command of the forces of darkness, now with both feet firmly planted on the long road back into the light. Together they were joined in this gray space, between the brilliance and nothingness of the divine gate and the dim but solid halls chiseled deep within the earth. 

Finally, it was Yang who pulled away, but only just. She rested her chin on Salem’s shoulder, her eyes still closed as she savored the memory of their kiss and the ongoing sensation throughout her body of the pair’s tight embrace. But the moment couldn’t last forever. 

“As nice as this is…” Yang whispered into her partner’s ear, “We do have people waiting on us.”

Salem let out a deep sigh. “I suppose you’re right,” she whispered back. Reluctantly she stepped away from Yang’s warm, inviting arms, then stopped as an idea occurred to her. “I could stop time,” she said. “But then we’d have Sophia watching us, and I don’t know if I could do that.” 

“You think she’s not already watching from inside the crown?” 

“Uhh…” Salem glanced upward. “For my own peace of mind, I think I’ll assume she can’t.” 

“Yeah, me too. But after this we may have some downtime, which means I can show you some things I learned from the other Salem.”

“What sort of… things?” Salem wasn’t sure what exactly her new partner was referring to, though she could take a good guess at the context. But I know what Yang meant. Unlike my sister Sophia, I don’t need to be present to know everything that people do. Sometimes limitless knowledge is more a burden than a gift. 

“Oh, you know,” Yang said with a wink. “Remember back when we were just leaving the castle, I told you I know everything you like.”

Salem gave a nervous laugh and took a single step back. “Well, you know more than I do then. I haven’t kissed anyone since Ozma left me. Although, that reminds me, actually. What were you  _ doing _ with that other Salem way out on the plains?”

“Ah, right.” Yang nodded. “You may be from months in the future, but the native Salem here was going ahead with your plans a little faster. We were about to go public when you showed up.” Salem’s eyes widened in alarm. “I know, you only had two Relics not all four, but it was enough. We were going to use Creation to raise a fifth CCT tower then send a live broadcast to the whole world at once, showing you with your magic and me with the scepter, bringing that barren wasteland to life around us.”

“So we reveal magic to the world, declare ourselves queens of Remnant, and if it goes badly we just use Choice to undo it all. That’s definitely part of the plan, but I’m amazed you convinced a version of me to do it while Ozpin and two Relics were still out there.”

“Well, as you said, we have Choice. Anything goes wrong, and you undo it. Even something as big as the Fall of Vale.” Yang gave the witch an encouraging smile. “You ready to do this?” 

“As much as I’ll ever be.” Salem took a deep breath and faced the empty space of the hall in front of her. “Sophia!” The moment the misty green spirit was settled in the air before her, Salem instructed her to include Yang as well. 

Yang startled slightly as she was brought out of temporal stasis. “Wow, she just appears  _ instantly, _ doesn’t she? Not at all like Jinn.”

“No, she takes some time,” Salem replied. “Sophia just likes to freeze everyone except me until I say otherwise.”

“Only one person can wear me at a time,” Sophia offered as explanation. 

“Only one person can carry the lamp too, but Jinn includes everyone in the area,” Yang pointed out. 

“This is the first time I have ever been called upon in my entire existence. But I’ll keep that in mind for the future. Do you have a choice you wish to make differently?” 

“We do,” Salem said, “though I have to point out, you’re not going to remember anything we say after the change goes through. It’s a little annoying, but it gets around your usage restrictions so I can’t complain too much.” 

“Wait!” Yang called out. “Before we change anything…” She pulled her scroll out of her pocket and opened it up, and flipped through her list of contacts. “We should both memorize Sienna Khan’s number, in case it disappears from my scroll in the new timeline.” 

“Oh, good thinking. Assuming she still lives somehow, she’ll be off in Mistral and may have never met either of us.” Salem studied the contact information the White Fang leader had given, looked away a moment, then back to Yang’s scroll to confirm. “I think I’ve got it.”

“Me too.” Yang slid her scroll shut and returned it to her pocket. “You never know when you might need an army of pissed-off Faunus coming to help out.”

“You never know,” Salem echoed. “Also… I’ve just had another idea. Trust me on this,” she said, then turned away from Yang to return her focus to the spirit of the Relic. “Sophia, include Ozpin.” 

A gasp of shock rose from the girl next to her, and Sophia raised a questioning eyebrow. “He’s not here,” she warned. “Ozpin is too far away to speak to me, so he won’t be able to participate in a choice.”

“Good. Do it anyway.” 

Sophia nodded. “It is done. But why?”

An evil grin came across Salem’s face. “Because right now, the world is stopped. He’ll notice that, and he can see it’s not Jinn’s doing. He’ll know that somewhere, for some reason, I am using the Relic of Choice. And for some reason, I decided to show him that fact. In this moment, Ozpin will be more terrified than he’s ever been in his whole long life. That’s good. I want him terrified. 

“And then, when the world shifts and he keeps his memories, he will see that the new timeline is better than the old. In his mental conception of me, I would never do such a thing. It’s been so long, I’d bet he’s forgotten what my goals really are. His naive belief in the goodness of the gods would be this world’s downfall and I’ve stopped him the only way I could, but chaos was never an end in itself. 

“Ozpin will be thinking the same thing Weiss did. There must be some evil plan for which un-destroying Vale is merely the first step. He’ll drive himself mad thinking ten moves ahead in a game we’re no longer playing, and he’ll never even consider that I might be doing this for its own sake. That’s good. I want him panicking. I want him unhinged.”

Yang was nodding along as Salem explained. “Good move,” she said. “If he wants to explain to everyone what just happened, he’ll have to give up the secret of what the Relic of Choice does. He’s not going to like that.” She smirked at the thought. “Even if I already know, my friends deserve better than Ozpin’s secrets and lies.” 

“Exactly. But this is enough delay, he’ll know what’s happening by now.” Salem stared the Relic spirit in the eyes. “Sophia… I don’t recall exactly when, but at least three weeks ago… I made the choice that I wanted to mount an assault on the Kingdom of Vale in order to retrieve the Relic of Choice, and then I did exactly that. Instead, I want to have chosen to slip in here undetected, to remove you from the vault without an attack. Hopefully, that other me will follow through on the nonviolent plan.”

“As you wish.” Sophia nodded. “Vale shall no longer be destroyed, and only you three will remember the Fall.” 


	7. Cycle 7: Der Unfall von Vale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for what you're about to read. 
> 
> But I'm not at all sorry for the two-language pun in the title. I went back and put titles on every chapter just for this.

Yang was flying through the air. Why was she flying? She had been standing solidly on the marble floor just an instant before. Her right arm was upraised and her metal hand was curled into a fist. That wasn’t right. There had been no enemies here before, and nothing in her sight immediately stood out as a threat. The bright light of the vault shone from directly in front of her, blocked only by a single dark figure in her way. 

Even as almost a total silhouette against the overwhelming radiance beyond, Yang instantly recognized the shape as that of her partner. Salem was leaning back, twisting to the side, her movement registering almost in slow motion as she and Yang both raced to process the new scene after the shift. Yang reflexively twisted the other way to try to avoid a collision, and thrust her fist out in front of her to send a single powerful shot out into the vast desert expanse. 

The recoil gave her a sharp jolt backward and slowed her flight dramatically, but she remained moving ahead as she fell to the hard floor beneath. Yang landed with one foot on the ground, but leaning too far forward to keep her balance upright. She tumbled a ways further, finally coming to rest on her back a few feet beyond where Salem stood, wavering, a hand to her face as she overcame the dizziness of the sudden jump. 

Someone called her name: a familiar voice, but not Salem’s. The witch was walking toward her now, bending down to offer a hand, and Yang took it gladly to pull herself back to her feet. She could hear a commotion farther down the hall, but right now she couldn’t take her eyes off Salem. The way her long white hair framed her face and almost glowed in the light, her slight smile as she met Yang’s gaze, the soft gradient of lighter to darker red in her eyes… 

“Yang!” An anxious call came again, the source this time identified at once as Ruby. Wasn’t she supposed to be up above, on her way out to meet Ozpin again after failing to open the vault?

Yang tore herself away from the sight of her partner and turned to see what was worrying her sister so much. Ruby had her scythe unfolded; beside her, Weiss stood with her rapier also at the ready. Yang held her hands out wide and called back to the pair from her position next to Salem. 

“What are you two doing h–” Her voice cut off suddenly in shock and her mouth hung open as a third person stepped up to join Ruby and Weiss, emerging from the dark hall beyond to take up a ready stance in line with her teammates. “…Blake?”

The pair stood paralyzed, staring at each other across the fifteen feet of wide marble floor. How could Blake be here? She had died long before the Fall of Vale. Had Sophia done something differently from how Salem had explained her function? Yang slowly brought up a hand to pull a strand of hair in front of her shoulder, and saw that it was yellow. She let it fall, and reached up further to the top of her head, where no second pair of ears poked up above the golden strands. 

What was Yang doing? Why had she canceled her charge toward Salem? Shouldn’t she be trying to take the Relic, not standing calmly with her back to her greatest enemy? Blake wrapped the ribbon attached to her left blade around her wrist, and transformed the right blade into its gun form. She dangled it loosely, holding the ribbon alone, ready to throw it at a moment’s notice to pull her partner to safety. 

But Yang turned away. She looked back to Salem instead, hands and gauntlets down by her sides where she could not fight or defend herself. “What just happened?” she asked. 

Salem was just as stunned by the reappearance of Team Ruby’s lost member as Yang was. “I… I don’t know.”

“What’s going on?” Ruby yelled from her position farther down the passage, as she leveled her scythe to point its sniper barrel at Salem. 

“What have you done to Yang?” Blake challenged. 

Yang whirled back around at the sound of Blake’s voice and took a few steps toward her, then stopped. “Blake… it’s okay, I’m fine. But you… I can’t believe you’re really back.” Suddenly her face was overcome with horror as she remembered what she had done, three weeks into an alternate future for her team, but just a minute ago to her. She had just kissed someone who wasn’t Blake. She had pledged to never leave the side of someone who wasn’t Blake. And she had done it without the slightest hesitation. 

“What do you mean, back? We’ve hardly been apart for months!”

Yang’s words caught in her throat and tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes. She looked back with one more desperate glance toward Salem, but the witch remained stock still, wearing an almost identical horrified expression as she puzzled out the reasons for this unexpected change. Yang looked back at her team, their weapons drawn and aimed in her direction even if not at her specifically, and sank to her knees as the first tears ran down her cheeks. 

“What am I supposed to do now?” she sobbed quietly to herself. 

Salem stepped forward to go to her, and a loud click came from Ruby’s rifle as she trained the barrel on the witch’s head and prepared to fire. Salem ignored the warning and knelt down next to Yang, and the golden-haired girl immediately threw her arms around her and cried into her shoulder. “Yang…” the witch murmured, “I think I’ve figured out what happened here. It’s going to be okay. We can fix anything.”

Among the rest of Yang’s team, the confusion only grew. Weiss gently placed a hand on the barrel of Ruby’s scythe and pushed it downward to aim away from their friend. “That is Salem, right?” she asked. “The immortal witch who wants to destroy the world?”

“Yep. That’s her.” Ruby clicked the safety back on, but kept her scythe ready. 

“So why is she being so… tender?” 

“And why is Yang accepting it?” Blake added, her eyes narrowed and ears flattened back. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Something’s happened to them both,” Ruby said. “Did you see? Salem jerked back and looked like she was dizzy, at the same time that Yang fell. And before that, she threw us all way back there with her magic, Yang included, to buy herself time as the door opened. She wasn’t tender then.”

“So what do we do about it?” Blake bristled with pent-up anger and energy and shifted her gaze rapidly back and forth between her girlfriend and her team. 

“You talk to Yang,” Weiss instructed. “I don’t think this new Salem’s in the mood for a fight, or we’d all be dead by now. Just keep things steady, and Ruby and I will come up with a plan to get the Relic.” She lowered her rapier and backed away, taking Ruby’s hand to lead her off to one side of the hall, in the shadowed space out of the brightest glare from the vault. 

Blake nodded and returned her full attention to the pair before her. She kept her gun ready but pointed down as she took a single step forward and demanded, “What’s going on here? What’s happened to you?”

Yang looked up, tears no longer flowing freely but her face still red. “I’m sorry, Blake,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry. I should have saved you. I should have been stronger. I should have never let Ozpin stop me.”

“What are you talking about? Save me from what?” She took another half step toward Yang, then changed her mind and retreated back again. “Who are you?”

The look Yang gave her was one of pure pain and desperation. “I’m… Yang? You know me.” She reached out with one shaking hand, but collapsed to rest her face in her palm and let out another pitiful sob. 

“Do I know you? Really? The Yang I know wouldn’t be _ hugging Salem! _”

“She’s not evil. Please…” Yang wiped the tears from her eyes, but more were already on their way. “We came back to help Vale. To stop the Fall. You weren’t there last time. It’s been months without you.”

Blake threw up her hands. “Yang, you’re not making any sense! We haven’t been apart more than a day at a time since Haven! And how can _ Salem _ not be _ evil? _”

Salem gently removed Yang’s arm from around her and slowly stood with her hands up, in as nonthreatening a pose as she could muster. “May I explain?” she asked, taking a single step back from where Yang still knelt on the cold floor. 

Blake raised her gun to aim it at Salem’s chest. Even if the witch could not be killed, the young Faunus was willing to bet she still felt pain. “Someone had better start explaining. What have you done to my girlfriend?”

“I assume dear Oz hasn’t told you all what the Relic of Choice does?” Salem knew he wouldn’t give up information like that unless absolutely necessary, and Blake’s frown and the quick shake of her head confirmed it. “Well, the short and simple answer is, it allows a very limited form of time travel. Yang and I have just come from the future.”

Yang raised her head and wiped away her tears again, then nodded to confirm Salem’s story. “We jumped together, replaced our past selves here. Where we came from… you were dead, Blake. I haven’t seen you in so long. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

Blake frowned further and shifted her grip on her pistol. “I refuse to believe I’m somehow destined to die soon. All that and whatever happened to put you under _ her _ spell too, we can avoid it.” She held out a hand as if Yang could take it, but remained firmly several paces away. “Your team needs you. _ I _ need you. We can get the Relic to safety, with Ozpin and Team Juniper.”

“It was Ozpin’s fault you died!” Yang practically shouted these words, loud enough that Ruby and Weiss in the background both turned in alarm, pausing their private conversation for a moment to pay attention. “I will _ never _ help him again. Come with us, Blake, please. I don’t want to lose you again.” Yang dropped to rest on her hands and knees with her head down, hair hanging in front of her to pool its last six inches on the floor. 

“How can you be with her?” Blake pleaded with her partner. “You know what she is! What she wants!” 

“Do _ you _ know what Salem wants, really? So she’s done bad things in the past. Who hasn’t? This isn’t even the same Salem that you’ve been told about! She’s trying to save the world, not destroy it!”

“She’s caused strife and war for millennia!”

“And if she hadn’t, Ozpin could have brought the gods back. You saw what they were like. You can’t trust Ozpin, but you _ can _ trust Jinn.” Yang staggered to her feet and made a halfhearted attempt to wipe away her tears. She pointed off to the side at Ruby and Weiss. “Ask her right now if you want. Ask her what Salem’s goals are, short and long term. Jinn will tell you the truth.”

“We’re not wasting our last question on this.” Blake flatly rejected the suggestion, but Yang’s absolute confidence that the Relic of Knowledge would back her up was concerning. She paused a moment to think it all through, but Salem’s voice interrupted her train of thought. 

“The slightly longer answer to what the Relic of Choice does is that it shifts its users into a different timeline,” the witch said. “Where we come from, Blake, you had been dead for three months. We jumped back less than one month – hence the surprise at your appearance. The reason is that the _ choice _ I changed was farther back than I thought it was, before your death. Long before the attack that I had decided on actually began. 

“My decision to utterly destroy the city of Vale was changed into a decision not to do that, and the consequences must have rippled forward into my orders to Tyrian or Watts during your time in Atlas. For whatever reason, you, Yang, and Ozpin never went on the scouting mission which this Yang remembers, in which Ozpin indirectly caused your death. As a result, Yang would have stayed with you rather than coming to me… until alternate versions of both of us arrived just now.”

“Vale isn’t under attack up there, is it?” Yang asked. Blake’s eyes narrowed, but she shook her head to give an answer. “That’s because of us! Salem is good now, there’s no more destruction going forward.”

“And that’s because of Yang,” Salem added. “Without her, I would never have decided to save so many lives for no personal gain.” 

Behind the increasingly skeptical Faunus, Weiss stepped away from the wall and came around toward Blake’s other side. Salem and Yang both followed her movement with their gaze, prompting Blake to turn as well to see her teammate’s approach. 

“Weiss? What is it?” Yang’s voice was stronger now as her tears had finally ceased. 

Weiss said nothing, only stepped forward with her sword in hand, in a solid combat grip even though it was lowered by her side. The moment she advanced to be in line with Blake, her free hand snapped up and a line of white glyphs appeared on the floor in front of her, stretching straight down the hallway to the side of Yang and Salem, all the way back to the far wall beside the vault door. 

A loud bang sounded from the opposite wall, the signature sound of Ruby’s sniper rifle firing one of its heavy-duty rounds while the rest of the gathering were all distracted. A metallic clink followed it, and Weiss cast her rapier aside as she glided forward along the line of glyphs, both hands held out as she looked up above to follow a glint of silver and emerald arcing through the air. 

Salem clutched at the top of her head, from where her crown had just been forcefully removed. She twisted at the waist, looking first at Ruby, then directly opposite the girl toward where the Relic was falling and two others now raced to catch it. Yang had broken out of her stunned reverie facing Blake the instant her sister’s gun went off, and she dove toward the corner in a desperate bid to get in front of the falling crown before Weiss could snatch it from the air. 

Yang fired a single burst from her gauntlet to propel herself faster, but from the instant the recoil shock rippled through her body it was already clear that the boost would not be enough. In seconds, Weiss would catch the Relic. She would take it to Ozpin. And that was something Yang could not allow. 

“I’m sorry, Weiss!” she called as she brought her gauntleted fist back up, ready to strike in front of her rather than behind. Weiss skidded to a halt at the end of her line of glyphs and raised both hands toward the silver crown, but no sooner had the cool metal brushed her fingertips than an explosive punch burst against her Aura, throwing her back into the wall behind. 

The Relic of Choice clinked to the floor and Yang dropped as if to tackle it. She clutched the crown to her chest and turned her back to Weiss, shielding it with her body even though the other girl was unarmed and still picking herself up after the blast. Both scrambled to regain their feet and Yang half walked, half jogged to take up her place by Salem’s side again, ignoring the dumbfounded looks from Ruby and Blake. She handed the crown to Salem before the witch could even ask for it, then stepped in front to put herself between the Relic and her friends’ weapons. 

“How can you be so corrupted?” Blake yelled at her, as Weiss returned to pick up her rapier and stood by Blake’s side. “Have you always been with her? Was everything we had built on a lie?”

Yang took a few steps forward with her hands out, shaking her left to disable the gauntlet she wore there. Her Aura glowed faintly yellow for a moment then faded out as Yang signaled that she didn’t want any further conflict. “No! Blake, please… I told you, it’s the Relic’s doing. You’re alive again in this timeline but Ozpin is just as much a monster. He’d let any of us die in a heartbeat if it helped him.”

“And Salem wouldn’t?!”

“She’s not driving people apart anymore. There’s no need to.” Yang took another step forward. 

Blake’s gun swiveled slightly so she was no longer pointing it at Salem, but at the girl who stood between her and the immortal witch. “Whose side are you on?” she demanded. “Mine or hers?” She kept her weapon trained on Yang’s chest even as she took one hand off of it to hold it out toward her girlfriend. 

Yang said nothing, only looked away. Paralyzed again by an impossible choice, she put her face in her hands as Ruby and Weiss looked on in horror. 

“You can’t even take my hand?” Blake pleaded. “I thought we would always be together! I promised to never leave your side. I never imagined you would leave mine. Relic or not, how can you believe such obvious lies? This is what Salem does! She turns people against each other, but you don’t have to let her! Come back to me, please…” Her gun wavered, but stayed where it was. 

“They’re not lies! I’ve seen for myself.” Yang looked up helplessly, searching for any way to convince Blake of the reality of this new Salem and coming up with nothing. She took one further step in Blake’s direction, then turned to look back at her other partner. Salem stood with the crown held tightly in one hand, positioned over her chest. Slowly she extended her free hand forward to match Blake, and bowed her head to hide the fact that she too was beginning to feel the onset of tears. 

Yang gazed upon her and saw with renewed wonder how the light filtered through her soft white hair, how her pale skin almost glowed as it reflected the otherworldly radiance, and she could almost feel the witch’s gentle touch again as she had just minutes earlier, before everything had suddenly become so complicated. But now Blake was here too, with her charming smile and expressive ears, her quiet trust both on the battlefield and off, and the sight of her brought back memories all the way from Beacon, those carefree days when the two of them had studied and played together, just a few hundred feet above where they all now stood. 

There was no possible way Yang could choose only one of the beautiful and talented women who stood to her either side… but perhaps she might not have to? “I can’t do this,” she said. “We don’t have to fight each other. If I love you both… There’s enough of me to go around.” Yang turned to the side and extended her arms out as far as she could toward both Blake and Salem. “I have two hands.”

“But you _ don’t! _ ” Blake exclaimed. “You haven’t had two hands since Adam cut one off! You lost an arm protecting _ me _ from one of _ her _ minions! And now you attack Weiss to give _ her _ a Relic?” Blake pulled back her open hand and shook her head. “Don’t lie to yourself as well. Don’t pretend you haven’t already made your choice.” 

Yang turned to her in shock, and her mouth hung open slightly as she looked down to realize she had been offering her cold metal arm to Blake and her natural one to Salem. She took a single tentative step forward, but was halted in her tracks by another furious call from her first love. 

“Stop right there! You can’t play both sides here. That’s not how this works!”

“I still love you, Blake…” Yang took another step closer, only to be met with a tightening of the Faunus’s grip on her weapon. “You died and I thought I’d moved on, but now you’re back and I could never leave you.”

“It’s over, Yang. I can’t love someone who works for Salem.” Blake blinked hard and tears ran from the corners of her eyes, but her voice held strong. Beside her, Weiss moved to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. 

“But… I…”

“Get away from me!” Blake snarled. 

Yang flinched back at the sound and blinked rapidly, but she couldn’t bear to give up so easily on the girl she had loved for so long. Did Blake still not believe her about the Relic’s function, and her arrival from an alternate, worse timeline? Could she not see that this was not the Salem she knew, because the old one would have killed them all without hesitation? There had to be a way to make her understand, to at least make both sides happy with Yang even if they avoided each other. She advanced another trembling step, and then another. 

Blake fired her gun. Just once, but once was all she needed. Yang’s Aura was disabled, and so the single small bullet tore directly into the girl’s flesh. 

Yang staggered back and sat down hard on the marble floor as she raised a hand to the wound in her chest. Salem rushed forward to catch her and cradle her shoulders as she leaned back into the witch’s lap, and across the wide hall Ruby dropped her scythe unceremoniously to hurry to her sister’s side as well. She skidded on her knees the last few feet and bent over Yang’s fallen form, not caring in the slightest that she was brushing hands with her mortal enemy as they both tried to aid the dying girl. 

“What do I do?” Salem hissed, as she held a hand above the wound. Her fingers took on a faint blue glow for a moment and the bullet popped out into her hand, but casting it forth to roll at Blake’s feet did nothing to stop the intense bleeding. “Healing magic exists, but I’ve never trained in it! Do you have anything?”

“I don’t know,” Ruby cried, placing her hands over Salem’s as they both applied pressure to the wound. “If we had Jaune here, maybe. I don’t know how to use magic! I’ve only had it a week.” She stared into her sister’s eyes and called to her, “Look at me, Yang! Stay with us.”

Yang’s eyes flickered downward to focus briefly on Ruby’s face before returning to stare blankly at the ceiling. Her lips moved slightly, and Ruby leaned over to put her ear close to her sister’s face. “Ruby…” Yang breathed, barely even a whisper. “Tell them both… I love them.” Her eyes drifted shut and a single ragged breath escaped her lips, a sigh of relief that her final message had been delivered to trusted ears. 

“Yang!” Ruby was frantic now as she held her sister’s head. “Open your eyes, please, we need you!” She caressed Yang’s cheeks as she called to her, but it was to no avail. She looked up to meet Salem’s gaze, tears streaming down both their faces, and wordlessly the pair set aside their opposing missions to lean into each other’s comforting embrace. 

“You loved her too, didn’t you?” Ruby whispered. “However that works, in the other time.” No words came in response, but she could feel Salem’s nod in her shoulder as the witch let out a long, uneven breath. 

Suddenly Salem pulled away sharply and sat up as straight as she could, even as Yang’s fallen form still rested across her legs. The silver crown was still clutched tightly in her hand, and she slammed it down on the top of her head and shouted the Relic’s name. _ “Sophia!” _

It felt like it took ages for the green spirit to swirl out from the crown and take up her human form in the wide open space in front of the vault. Salem didn’t let her speak a single word of introduction before yelling up at her. “You are going to make this right!” she began, channeling a rage she knew well to blot out the grief and pain. “I want Yang alive, and you are going to make that happen!”

But her burst of fury did not last long. The pain was still there no matter what she did, and soon she found herself sobbing into Yang’s hair, as Sophia watched patiently from the side. Salem remained bent over her lost partner for several minutes, but when she finally straightened up again, her tears had run dry and she was calm enough to speak in a level voice. 

“Sophia, include Ruby,” she said, and the girl’s stasis lifted. “Ruby… I am going to rewind time. I am going to make Yang alive again. With her help.” She gestured up to draw Ruby’s attention to the Relic spirit floating before them. “This is Sophia. Jinn’s sister. She changes choices in the past. Help me find a single choice that can make everything better.”

Before Ruby could speak, Sophia interjected. “If a single resurrection is all you want, using the Relic of Creation would be much simpler.”

“But I don’t _ have _ the Relic of Creation here,” Salem shot back. “Eve has it up above. She’s up there stopping Oz and Qrow when I needed her with me, stopping Blake!” She pointed at the Faunus girl, frozen in time with her gun aimed down but still unholstered, next to her Weiss on her knees with her face buried in her hands. Salem sighed deeply. “I should never go anywhere without Eve. I can plan all I want, but she’s the one who really makes things happen. Or makes things not happen.”

“That’s the scary woman we met on the way in?” Ruby asked. “Would bringing her down here help get Yang back?”

“Not really,” Salem muttered. “We could bring her back to life directly, but it wouldn’t solve the real problem here.”

“The problem of Yang loving both Blake and you.” Ruby looked down at her sister and shook her head. “I don’t know what happened in that alternate world to make her turn to your side, or what you two had together… but for what it’s worth… you don’t seem at all like the Salem we’ve been told about. Not like the Salem we’ve been fighting. And I suppose I have Yang to thank for that.”

“I suppose so.” Salem bowed her head and gently ran her fingers through Yang’s hair. “The funny thing is, this Yang and I aren’t even from the same timeline originally. I swapped in and replaced the Salem who she had actually fallen in love with, and she accepted me too like it was no issue. She’s a remarkable person, really.” 

Salem looked up and caught Ruby’s eye again. “Until yesterday, I _ was _ the kind of Salem you’ve been fighting. And I’d won. Apart from Yang, every member of your group, including Oz, was dead. And I’m sure we still have very different ideas about how the world should go, but… that part at least, I don’t think I want to do anymore.” She offered a hand to Ruby. “Right now, we agree on one thing: we both want Yang alive and happy.”

Ruby clasped the witch’s hand in her own without a second’s hesitation. “So how do we make that happen?”

“You make that happen,” Sophia cut in, “by telling me about a choice someone made, and a different choice that should have been made instead. There are quite a few options that would result in Yang Xiao Long being alive. Which will it be?”

Salem rested her face in her hands. “I think I know.” She paused, and Ruby waited patiently for her to find her voice again. “There are lots of ways to make her alive, but not many that would make her happy. Sophia… Presumably, in this timeline, I made a choice to come out of hiding and give the second half of the vault key, after Ruby had failed to open it on her own. The half that Ozpin would have given, if he had not been stopped short by Eve. Obviously, the Salem of this timeline did that too early.”

Ruby nodded along. “We heard the door opening and saw light around the corner, so we turned back and found you.”

“So, if I make that a little later, you wouldn’t notice. You’d keep going on your way and find Oz up above, and I would take the Relic without confrontation. I’d be gone before you made it back down here with him.”

“And Yang?”

Salem pinched up the fabric of her dress and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “She’ll be the native one to that timeline. Alive and happy.” She waved a hand toward the two time-stopped girls in front of them. “That Blake won’t remember what this one did. Neither will Weiss. Only you and I will still be from the current timeline.” 

She paused as a new thought occurred to her. “Actually… Sophia, include Ozpin again.” Seeing Ruby’s quizzical look, she explained. “It won’t change anything for better or worse because he’ll have no clue what’s going on down here. But when he notices the stasis around him now, he’ll be terrified, and I see no downsides to that.” 

“So…” Ruby thought aloud, “I’ll remember everything, but they won’t?” Salem nodded to confirm. “And for their own good, I don’t think I should tell them. Blake and Yang will be happy together… but you still lose your Yang.” Salem nodded silently again, and Ruby reached out to take her hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking the witch in the eyes. “But thank you for doing this for Yang, and for my team. Thank you for being a better person than I thought you were.”

Salem had no words to express her thoughts to the girl, but she gave Ruby’s hand a gentle squeeze as she looked away. She took in a deep breath and let it out in silence, then finally looked up at the waiting spirit. “Sophia… when I chose to open the vault here… instead, make me choose to wait another two minutes, so that Ruby’s team will be farther away and will not return to find me.”

Sophia nodded. “And you agree?” she said simply, addressing Ruby. “I cannot ask the one who is not present.” 

Ruby took one last look at Salem, then gave her answer. “I do. And thank you as well, Sophia.”


	8. Cycle 8: Eternals' Reunion

Salem was alone. Here, deep beneath the surface of Remnant, hidden away in a place few knew existed and fewer still had set foot in, the witch looked down at the silver crown in her hands and wept. It was her choices that had led to this. Yang had not abandoned her. The rest of her team had acted reasonably given the situation. Salem was left with no one to blame but herself for the misfortune that had befallen her, for even the Relic only did as Salem instructed. 

There was ample time to stew in her thoughts as she made her way through the long hallways beneath Beacon Academy, on her way back up to the surface. Salem had been alone before. She had been without a romantic partner for most of her life. So why was this different? Mere days ago, Yang had been an enemy and that was normal, it was expected, even welcomed. But in such short time she had made such an impression, and Salem could not stand to take this step backward. 

Mere days before Ozma had arrived at her father’s castle, Salem never would have dreamed of starting a relationship with the legendary warrior. But she had, and she had lost that love as well, unfairly and before the proper time. And her present loss was even worse, for it could not be solved by simply raising the dead. That was something Salem could do now, but even that ability once reserved for the gods could not mend her heart. 

Salem trudged across the cobblestone paths in front of Beacon’s main building. The streetlights were on and in the distance a pair of students walked by together, on their way back to the dorms on this unremarkable evening when no attack had come. Around Salem life went on as it always had, oblivious to her power and her pain. 

She pulled her scroll from her pocket and sent a brief message to Eve. Relic secured. Release everyone. Bring the ship to the field beside the entrance courtyard for pickup. Salem waited beneath one of the many trees ringing the plaza, and before long the dark shape of an Atlas airship came across the field and settled down in front of her. Salem stepped forward as the bay door slid open, prepared to clamber aboard the hovering ship, but as she approached she felt her own weight lessening as Eve’s magic lifted her up to place her safely and gracefully inside. 

Salem made her way to the front cabin to meet her pilot, and was surprised to find the second seat already occupied. “Xuri? What are you doing here? I thought you’d probably be back in Izuruka.”

The zebra Faunus gave her a strange look. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

Salem rested her face in one hand and let out a sigh of disgust. “Not in any way you’d remember,” she said. “It’s a long story, involving a lot of magic. Has Eve told you about magic?”

“A little bit. She can do the same things I do. I’ve never met anyone else like me before. I came to Vale to get supplies for my village and stopped by Beacon to see if anyone here could tell me more about these powers I have, and I was lucky enough to run into Eve here. Are you also one of these four magic Maidens? What’s your name?”

“I am Salem. It’s nice to meet you again.” Salem reached out to give the girl a firm handshake. “I’m not a Maiden, but I’m a different kind of magical person. Again, long story. One of us can tell you everything you need to know later, but I don’t know if I can concentrate on all that right now.” She held out a hand toward Eve, and though the Winter Maiden still stared away from Salem out the front of the ship, the scepter of Creation floated through the air and came to rest across her palm. 

Salem walked over to the side of the main cabin and pointed the Relic’s tip downward, and a reclining chair with thick padding covered in soft blue velvet appeared from nowhere, startling Xuri. Salem settled down on it and conjured a matching velvet pillow, which she pressed into her face with both hands. “Everything is messed up and I don’t know how to fix it,” she groaned. 

“What’s wrong?” Xuri asked. 

Salem let out another heavy sigh and held up the Relic of Choice. “This crown,” she declared, “is  _ evil! _ And I hate it! And it’s the only thing that can save us all!”

“That’s the Relic, isn’t it?” Eve asked for clarification as she brought the ship up over the trees. The airship’s buttons and levers moved of their own accord as she sat motionless in the pilot’s chair, staring straight ahead. “If you recovered it peacefully as you intended, what else was needed?”

“I needed Yang!” Salem dropped the crown in her lap and took up the pillow again to smack it into her face over and over. When she finally stopped she was breathing heavily and took a moment to regain what composure she could. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked aloud to the ceiling. “Why do I  _ care? _ ”

Neither of the Maidens said a word. The airship glided over the outskirts of the Beacon campus and crossed the edge of the plateau to begin the descent into the city, heading for the safehouse in the absence of specific directions from Salem. 

“The Relic gave her to me. I didn’t ask. But… it was good. I liked that timeline. That’s how it should have been.” Salem let out a soft scream of frustration and threw the velvet pillow down by her feet. “Why did Blake have to come into my life again and ruin everything? What does Yang even see in her?” 

“I’m confused,” Eve said. “Are you referring to the Yang and Blake on Ozpin’s team? Has the Relic given you information beyond what we previously knew about them?”

“More than information. It’s given me experience. I’ve jumped across timelines. Yang was on my team and now the Relic has taken her away. More than that…” Salem paused as tears began to well up in the corners of her eyes. “That Yang loved me. And… I…” The words she thought she might say would not come. “She was the only one to show me genuine kindness. The first person to treat me as a  _ friend, _ more than just a strategist or a boss. 

“I never really realized I needed that,” Salem continued. “And maybe it’s only now that I  _ could _ have someone like that? Before I had any of the Relics I was too focused on stopping them from being brought together, and then I had to be all strategist all the time. I brought down countless kingdoms to make sure world peace never came, and now I’ve just saved one, undone my own work… for Yang.”

Xuri rotated her chair to face Salem and offered the witch a hand, but it was waved aside. “So you’ve… magically, somehow… come from a different timeline, and now your girlfriend’s not with you anymore? Is that what’s happened?”

Salem sat up straight but couldn’t quite manage to look Xuri in the eyes. “Yang being on my side was an aberration,” she said. “Her being with Oz, with Blake, that’s the norm. I had her with me once so I’m sure I could do it again, but… can I though, really? Even my Yang still loved Blake equally to me.” Slowly she lowered her face to rest in her hands. She cried quietly to herself for a minute as Xuri looked on with worry, unsure how to comfort this strange and possibly evil woman with her magical heartbreak. 

Suddenly Salem looked up again and her hands balled into fists. “Why did Sophia have to send me to that timeline at all?” she snarled. “I was fine before I met her! I was happy with my life!”

“Were you though, really?” Xuri echoed the witch’s own words from earlier. “It sounds like this Yang brought you something you’ve been needing for a long time.”

“I was fine! I’ve always had my team. I don’t need other people. I don’t need to change anything about what I was doing. I’ve had the Relic of Creation for nine years and didn’t change my ways then, so why do it now? Why should I try to be  _ good _ and save Vale if this is what happens when I do? It was that jump that brought Blake back to life!”

Xuri looked at her with narrowed eyes. “The point of being good is… it’s good, it’s the right thing to do. You save lives because everyone deserves to live. That’s why. Salem, was it? You’re clearly in pain and not thinking straight at the moment. Why don’t you just magic up a nice cup of tea and take a moment to calm down.”

“I will  _ not _ calm down!” Salem reached over and grabbed the Relic of Creation, but tea was the farthest thing from her mind. “I hate feeling like this! Why can’t it just be the kind of pain I can deal with?” She held up her free hand to the tip of the scepter and a dagger appeared in her grasp. Xuri’s eyes widened with alarm, but before she could grab the witch’s wrist, Salem plunged the blade deep into her own chest. 

All the breath left her at once with the sudden shock and she almost doubled over in pain. Moments later Salem pulled the blade free, miraculously clean, with no hole left in her periwinkle dress, and as the shock left her face she looked down at the dagger with contempt. “Useless thing,” she spat, and cast it aside to clatter beneath the airship control panels. “It could at least have the decency to leave a mark. A record of one more horrible day I’ve had to live through.”

Salem sighed heavily as she dropped the silver scepter as well and laid back on her plush seat. “Eve, you were a doctor once,” she called out. “Heal me! Make everything better!”

“I was a veterinarian,” Eve replied. “What you need is a therapist. Those are very different kinds of doctor.” 

“Can’t you use your Semblance on me? That will help for a little while, right?”

“It will not.” Eve remained firmly where she was as she settled the airship down to the ground, parking it at the same small airbase Salem and Xuri had arrived at before, in a future that would no longer come. 

“Do it anyway? Please?” 

“As you wish.” Eve stood up from the pilot’s seat and crossed the room to kneel at Salem’s side. She placed a hand on the witch’s forehead and closed her eyes, then gasped and lurched forward, a hand pressed to her own chest. Within seconds she returned to her stoic pose, as if the slip in the facade had never occurred. 

“Your vagus nerve is activated and is causing you psychosomatic discomfort throughout your entire body,” Eve pronounced. “Your nervous system is overcompensating for stress which is not physical in nature. You seem to have pulled a muscle in your left arm some time in the last week, and you may have recently been stabbed in the heart with a sharp object. Otherwise, you seem to be in perfect health.” 

Eve fell silent, but kept her hand on Salem’s head until the witch waved her off. She stood by the door to the airship control room and waited patiently for further orders, out of sight of the others present as she quietly regulated her own internal processes, returning to normal after her Semblance switched off. 

“You’re right, that doesn’t help at all,” Salem grumbled. 

“What was supposed to happen?” Xuri asked. 

“Eve can take the pain of others onto herself. She used it to great effect as a vet, before becoming the Winter Maiden. It allowed her to diagnose patients who could not speak about their problems directly. But apparently, it only works on  _ physical _ pain, so I’m just out of luck.”

“It’s also worth noting that I can’t do it the other way,” Eve said. 

“Right. Any pain she gives to others is due to her magic, not her Semblance. But even then, she can knock people out and they barely feel a thing.”

“Speaking of which… If you like, I can track down the person who stabbed you and do the same to them,” Eve offered, deadpan as always. 

For the first time since Yang’s death, Salem cracked a smile. “No… no, once was quite enough, thank you.” She stared wistfully off into an empty corner of the room. “But I still don’t know what to do anymore. It would be so easy to forget it all and do as I’ve always done. I’m so good at destruction. At driving people apart, turning friends into foes… and now I’ve done it to myself, on accident. Right when I was trying to stop and turn things around.”

Xuri smiled warmly at her. “I still don’t really know you, but I know that it’s never too late to improve yourself. No matter what you’ve done before. It won’t be easy – it never is – but it’s worth the effort. For yourself, and for everyone around you. Yang may not be by your side anymore, but you can still act as if she is.”

“You sound a lot like Yang, you know.” Salem gave a half shrug. “It makes sense. I’ve seen timelines where you and she were together the same way she and I were.” She sighed and shook her head. “I need to talk to Yang again. Even though she’s not the one I know. Eve, do you happen to know where Ozpin’s team has been staying in Vale?”

“I do. I have been spying on them as you instructed for some time, to inform you when they went for the Relic of Choice. However, I must advise, going there in person would not be a tactically wise decision.”

“I know, but I have to do it anyway. Someone has to convince me not to destroy Vale… or all of Remnant. Can’t very well be in pain if I call down angry gods to wipe this world from existence…”

“You should definitely not destroy Vale,” Xuri said. 

“Or all of Remnant,” Eve added. 

“No, no, it won’t work coming from you. Just tell me where this timeline’s Yang is so I can go see her again. You two will stay here with the Relics – both of them. Eve, I want check-ins via my scroll every twenty minutes. I will respond with the words ‘all good’. If I fail to respond, or if I say anything else, you are to assume I have been somehow incapacitated or my scroll has been stolen. In that situation, you are to use the Relic of Choice to undo my decision to go there in the first place. Come fetch me, then put the crown on your head and say the exact words I’m sending you.”

Salem opened her scroll and texted Eve the detailed instructions on how to activate the Relic. “Sophia! Include Salem. When Salem chose to disregard my warning and seek out Ozpin’s team in person tonight, make her instead choose to stay behind and listen to Xuri and me. I told her so, and now look what’s happened.”

“There you go,” Salem said as she slid her scroll shut again and returned it to her pocket. 

Eve’s own scroll floated up to rest in the air in front of her, but its touchscreen required actual contact in order to function. She reached up with a physical hand instead of her magic for once, and read the words her master had sent. “Interesting phrasing,” she commented. “But that is a sound contingency plan. Ozpin and his team have been living at 391 Khamos Street, just a few blocks from here.”

“Thank you, Eve.” Salem picked up the crown and handed it to her most trusted team member. “While I’m away, tell Xuri about the Relics. Where they came from, why we need them, all of that. The basics about Oz and me as well. She’s got an important task ahead of her, after all. If I end up taking a while, go ahead and start teaching Xuri advanced magic too. I promised an alternate version of her that she’d get real training as long as she’s with us.”

Salem stood and made her way out of the airship’s front cabin to the central loading bay. The overall plan was much like its Mistral counterpart, both real ones and the false version that in this timeline had never been made. Salem lowered herself down to the ground, and the bay door remained open behind her as she walked away. She exited the airfield, and moments later Eve and Xuri emerged as well, heading the opposite direction toward the modest house Salem owned nearby. 

It was a short walk to the street where Ozpin’s team was staying, but Salem still had time enough to go over everything she wanted from this meeting. The first order of business was seeing Yang… seeing her content in her life without Salem, and pushing through the renewed wave of pain she knew that would bring. She had made this latest jump for exactly that purpose, Salem reminded herself, to preserve Yang’s happiness even at the cost of her own. And with luck, even this unfamiliar Yang could provide some guidance, and give her the push she needed to avoid falling back into her destructive ways. 

For Salem did  _ want _ to better herself… but it was just so easy to put off that responsibility, to do nothing, and before she knew it another hundred years could have passed. And during all that time as Salem brought division and war that was no longer necessary to stave off the gods’ return, countless innocent people would die unfairly and before their time. Just like Ozma. Just like Yang. To avoid such injustice in the world, wasn’t it worth the effort now?

And while she was thinking about the future, there were some long term plans that she could work on now as well. Things she had dreamed of centuries ago, but had set aside as impossibilities. Soon she would meet someone who might be able to help her. That was her second goal tonight, wrapped neatly in with the third: could any of Ozpin’s team be convinced to leave him? Even if they didn’t join her side either… it’s not about overpowering the enemy, but about taking away what power they have. 

The door to her enemies’ house loomed before her and Salem hesitated on the top step. The lights were on within. Yang was likely home. And so was Blake and the rest of their two teams, and Oz himself. But she had come this far and she had to see things through. Salem reached up to place a finger on the doorbell, took in a deep breath, and pushed the button before she could second-guess herself any further. 

The latch clicked, and the door swung open to reveal a dark-haired boy in green. Salem flinched involuntarily at the sight, before it fully registered in her mind that this was not her ancient adversary. “Ren,” she greeted him. “Hello. Is Yang here? I need to speak with her.”

“Uh, yeah. I’m sorry, do we know each other?” Ren turned to call back into the house. “Yang, someone’s here to see you!” Turning back to Salem, he waved her inside. “Come on in. There’s a pot of tea on, if you want any.”

“Thank you, Ren.” Salem stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind her. “We’ve never met face to face before, but we’ve both heard plenty about each other.” 

The front door opened onto a wide common area to the right, ringed with chairs and couches, with a large fireplace in the side wall. A rack bearing the group’s weapons rested next to the fireplace, and behind, through a gap in the adjoining wall, a hint of kitchen could be seen. In the closest spot to the door, Nora lay sideways across both arms of a chair, dangling her head upside down to see the visitor as she waved. Jaune rested at one end of a couch nearby, a steaming mug in his hands. 

There was a commotion from the kitchen, and Weiss stepped out into the common room. Two steps in, she froze, leading Yang to almost bump into her as she followed. Her eyes widened, and she lurched to the side to grab her rapier off the rack. 

“Oh, not again,” Salem muttered, and Ren glanced at her in confusion. White glyphs appeared in a line across the floor, and with no Eve present to halt Weiss in her tracks, Salem merely rolled her eyes and resigned herself to her fate. She made no attempt to get out of the way, and even turned a little to face directly into the coming assault. 

A blur of white shot across the room, and Weiss’s sword pierced all the way through Salem’s body, meeting no resistance from Aura or magic. Salem gasped with the shock as Weiss looked down at her own hand, then up to Salem’s face, then back to her sword again as if only now realizing just what she had done. 

“Weiss, could you  _ please _ not do that?” Salem asked calmly, more tired than angry. She shook her head in mock disappointment, and Weiss let go of her rapier and stumbled back a few steps as she glanced around the room. Other members of the group rushed in from elsewhere in the house to see what was going on, while those already present gaped with astonishment as they realized exactly who had come to their door. 

Salem left the sword exactly where it was, and held up both hands. “I’m not here for a fight, please. I don’t want to hurt any of you. I just need to talk to Yang.” 

“Why me?” An accusatory voice came from across the room as Yang and Blake entered together. “What do  _ you _ want with any of us?”

Salem saw a flash of red in the corner of her eye as Ruby came down the stairs by the door. She glanced over and gave the girl a wistful smile, knowing she shared in the knowledge of what never was, but said nothing as she moved to take the isolated seat in the far corner by the fireplace. The tip of Weiss’s rapier poked into the seat’s back as she leaned on it, but still she left it in its place. 

“So, Salem…” Ren was the first to speak her name aloud. “I… don’t think any of us anticipated meeting you… like this… but I don’t wish to fight you either. But we’re all rather confused about what brings you here, alone. You know who we all are.” Ren sat down on the arm of Nora’s chair now that she was sitting normally, having been startled by the stabbing of their guest. Ruby took up a spot between them and Jaune, while the rest of her team stood awkwardly by the kitchen door. 

Salem rested her face in one hand for a long moment, then finally looked up to address Ren. “I’m here,” she said, her gaze drifting rightward across the entire group, “because I need your help.”

Shocked murmurs echoed around the gathering. Yang and Blake finally sat, taking the last two spaces on the couch next to Jaune, though their eyes remained wary and Yang’s legs were tense, ready to throw her into action at an instant’s notice. 

“You all are working to make the world a better place, right?” Salem looked back to the center, focusing on Ruby and Jaune. “I want to join you.”

“We’re making the world a better place  _ by stopping you!” _ Nora exclaimed. 

A new voice came from the stairs. “What is going on down here?” A commanding voice, that of a seasoned leader, emanated from the diminutive frame of a fifteen year old farmhand, twirling his cane as he stood on the bottom step. 

Salem recognized him instantly, as she always did no matter what new body her once-partner found himself in.  _ “You.” _ She pointed a finger at the boy and a fuchsia lance of light shot across the room, blasting a hole in the wooden banister as Ozpin narrowly twisted out of the way. “I’m not here for you.” 

“Salem.” Ozpin remained calm as he stepped forward, cane held still now, in both hands. To anyone else he would have looked almost relaxed, but Salem knew it was a decoy, a facade to cover the intense worry and tension that still came through in his eyes. “What are you doing in my house?”

Salem raised one eyebrow. “Don’t I belong here?” she asked. “We’ve never gotten officially divorced, you know. I’ve never been served with a restraining order. Anyway, as I was just telling these nice young Huntsmen and Huntresses… I am trying to become a better person and make Remnant an easier place to live. I am asking  _ them _ for help toward this goal, because I don’t trust myself not to fall back into old habits. Yang has been a big help already; she really opened my eyes to how the world is outside my usual view of things.”

“Why this fixation on me? What did I ever do? I’ve never even seen you before except in–” Yang stopped short, suddenly deciding she didn’t want to mention the Relic of Knowledge and the vision her team had seen. 

Salem looked down and caressed the handle of the rapier still stuck through her heart, spinning its Dust chambers until the yellow lightning cartridge was on top. “I’m not the Salem you all know,” she said, staring at the floor in front of Yang’s feet. “And you’re not the Yang I know. The Relic of Choice has done great and terrible things to us both. But I believe we can still help each other.”

“Why should we believe anything you say?” Blake challenged. 

“And what’s this about the Relic of Choice?” Nora chimed in. “Isn’t that the one at Beacon? Ruby said the vault wouldn’t open for her.” 

Ren placed a hand over Nora’s mouth to stop her from accidentally revealing anything else that they thought Salem might not know. “Jaune, you’ve been quiet. What do you think of all this?”

Jaune glanced nervously between Ozpin and Salem. “I think… we can’t be sure of anything, and I’d like some proof, but it’s hard to say no to someone asking for help to better themselves. Salem did come here alone, and she hasn’t attacked any of us except Ozpin that once, and that’s… honestly, pretty understandable.” Addressing Salem directly, he continued, “I would  _ like _ to give you a chance, but… I just don’t know how any of us can trust you.”

Salem nodded. “Dearest Oz, perhaps you can make yourself useful after all. Tell everyone about the timeline you’re really from. What it was like before the Relic of Choice brought us all back to this day.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ozpin flatly denied any involvement with the Relic, but Salem only smiled at him. 

“Oh, I know you do. You like your secrets, but if you won’t tell them, I will. How about we start with what exactly the Relic does?”

Ozpin grumbled to himself as he stepped up to join in the circle of people around the common room. He cleared his throat loudly, then spoke to his teams, carefully not looking over at Salem in the far corner. “The Relic of Choice allows its user to re-examine a choice that they have made, and choose differently.”

“You can do better than that,” Salem chided. “Come on now, Oz, give it up! Listen to Yang. No more secrets, no more lies. I’m prepared to tell these kids everything – because don’t they deserve to know what they’re dealing with? I keep my own team well informed. In fact, my newest recruit should be learning all about Relics and gods at this very moment. I found the Summer Maiden, you see. But back to you, Oz… what does it  _ mean _ to choose differently? What happens to Choice’s user, and to everyone else?”

Ozpin’s eyes narrowed and he held his cane closer into his chest. “It means the Relic can change the past. The user jumps from one timeline to another, the difference being that single choice.”

Salem beamed at him like he was a dog who had just done a trick. “See, that wasn’t too hard, now was it? Now… you’re not really from  _ this _ timeline, are you?”

“I am not.” Ozpin hung his head. “Salem has used the Relic twice, and for some reason she brought me along into this timeline. I don’t know why.”

“And what did I change?” 

Ozpin stared intently at his feet, as if avoiding eye contact would relieve him of the burden of answering. He ran his fingers over the trigger of his cane and adjusted his coat. 

“Answer the question, Ozpin.” Ruby’s voice forced him to look up, and all could see the fear on his face. “What did Salem change with the Relic?”

Ozpin took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “The first time…” He nervously adjusted his coat again. “She reversed the Fall of Vale. The second jump, I don’t know.” Everyone stared at him. “I swear, I don’t know! I haven’t noticed anything different.”

The seven young Huntsmen and Huntresses all looked to Salem now for confirmation, and she nodded. “He’s telling the truth,” she said. “He wouldn’t have seen that one.” Her scroll buzzed in her pocket, and she opened it to send Eve the two words that signaled everything was still alright. 

“So, this Fall of Vale…” Jaune spoke up once again. “What was that? What happened?”

“Pretty obvious from the name, don’t you think?” Salem shrugged. “I destroyed much of Vale to get at the Relic of Choice, killed a few hundred people, injured thousands more… and then saw the error of my ways and made the whole thing never happen. You can thank an alternate version of Yang for that.” 

Yang leaned forward in her seat. “Is that why you’ve been so focused on me this whole time? Because in some alternate past, we somehow knew each other?”

Salem nodded. “More than just knew each other, I’d say.” Her hand drifted up to rest on the hilt of Weiss’s sword again, and she looked away to stare into the fireplace. There was a moment of silence, and then suddenly her gaze swung back across the gathering to fixate on her rival. “Ozpin… in the timeline you’re from, why did Yang leave you and join my side?”

“Because Blake died.” 

Salem threw up her hands. “I swear, getting information out of this man is like pulling teeth. How many times has Yang told you, no more partial truths?” She fixed Ozpin with a chilling stare and asked, “ _ Why _ did Blake die?”

Ozpin was faced with quite the dilemma. He knew what had happened. So did Salem, and each knew that the other knew. He had already been forced to give out far more information than he would have liked, but there was no backing out now. A refusal to answer would look extremely suspicious, and many members of his team were already eyeing him warily. Perhaps the best defense was a good offense?

“If you want all this aired, why not just tell them yourself?” Ozpin said. “Besides, none of it ever happened now.”

Salem arched one eyebrow. “It happened for you and me,” she replied. “And that affects who we both are today. As for why you… I could tell them whatever I like and it wouldn’t mean a thing if they don’t believe me. But if the two of us agree… They know us. Would we agree on anything that’s not objective fact? Now tell us, why did Blake Belladonna die in Atlas?”

There was no escape. “…Because I didn’t save her.”

“And?”

“Because I didn’t let Yang save her.” 

Yang leapt to her feet and the gun barrel embedded in her metal arm rose into its ready position. “You  _ what?!” _ Her eyes were red and a thin wreath of flame danced over her golden hair. “You bet I’d ditch your lying ass if you got my girlfriend killed like that!”

Blake reached up to gently tug on Yang’s mechanical arm and return her to her seat. She leaned into Yang’s shoulder and placed an arm around her, stroking the back of her metal hand until she calmed down. Yang closed her eyes for a moment, and when she reopened them they were back their normal shade of purple. 

Now Jaune stood, and he looked back and forth at all his friends. “I think we need a team meeting,” he announced. “Ozpin, Salem, both of you be quiet for a little while. Let us discuss all this just between us.” Salem nodded, and Ozpin bowed his head and took a single step back. 

“Jaune’s right,” Ruby said. “We could all use some time to think.”

“As crazy as it sounds…” Nora spoke her musings aloud. “I think Salem is telling the truth. Maybe she really has changed.”

“After thousands of years of destruction?” Weiss challenged her. “I still don’t trust her. There’s got to be some trick we’re just not seeing yet.”

“But everything about the Relic was very believable,” Ren said. “She’s right that we wouldn’t have believed her if she’d just told us directly. But dragging it out of Ozpin like that… That part at least, I say we accept.” 

Mutters of agreement came from the group, though Weiss still looked displeased. “That part, maybe. What the Relic of Choice does makes sense. Ozpin did tell us it was very powerful. But Salem wanting to be good now? I don’t buy it.”

“This isn’t the same Salem, though.” Yang furrowed her brows as she shifted her hand slightly to interlace her fingers with Blake’s. “If she’s used the Relic, then she’s from that other timeline. She’s had a different past than the one we know.”

“A few months’ difference out of how long?” Blake asked. “I do believe people can change for the better. Sun and I helped Ilia pull herself out of that same destructive mindset. But with that much history, I have to be skeptical.”

“ _ Thank _ you, Blake.” Weiss smiled. “Even if she did do a good deed in Vale – which there’s no proof of, except what those two say – one act is not a pattern. I’d need to see a lot more before I accept she’s different.”

“We could get proof of Salem’s intentions…” Ruby pulled the blue lamp forward in one hand from where it rested at the side of her belt. “It seems like a small thing for our last question, but we should remember we do have the option.”

“We do,” Ren said, “but we shouldn’t need it. Anyone is capable of change. I have to believe that. I don’t think our question should be ‘Is Salem a good person’, but rather, ‘Does she  _ want _ to be a good person’. Because if she does, then she deserves a chance to try, and I think we’d be obligated to help.”

Nora leaned against the arm of the chair where Ren sat. “What he said.”

“But how do we know it’s not a trick?” Blake squeezed Yang’s hand as she looked over at the other pair. “One lie amidst a dozen truths is easy to overlook. Adam did that sort of thing to me all the time. Occasionally he’d do something genuinely good, and it would be enough to make me doubt all the red flags I’d seen before. Just barely enough to keep me with him, time after time, through all the ‘slips’ and ‘accidents’ and ‘mistakes’. If we accept her and she turns on us, we’re all dead. We can’t fight her. I don’t know if we can take this kind of risk.”

“I get that, Blake, but…” Ruby’s mouth hung open for a moment as she tried to formulate her thoughts into coherent sentences. “You were skeptical of Yang too, at first. She was nice to you and you kept waiting for a darker side to be revealed, because Adam had poisoned your sense of what friends and teammates were like. You’d come to expect red flags so much that the absence of them became its own red flag to you.” Ruby stopped again suddenly. “I’m sorry, I’m… not quite sure where I was going with that.” 

“You were close to making a good point,” Ren said. “Helping anyone become better is always going to be risky in the beginning, because when you first meet, they’re not a good person yet. You are knowingly associating with someone who you think does bad things. And as Weiss pointed out, you need a consistent pattern of behavior to tell what someone is like, not any individual act, good or bad. But you can’t  _ get _ that pattern if you don’t take that first chance.”

“Actually, about part of what Blake said…” Weiss crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head slightly as she spoke to her teammate. “Ruby, do you remember what Maria told you?”

Salem looked up from idly turning her scroll over in her hands, waiting for either the end of the discussion or for Eve’s second check-in. “Who’s Maria?” she asked. 

“Hey! Team meeting. You keep quiet.” Weiss chastised the witch, then returned her attention to Ruby. “At the farm, and in Argus. I think her advice could solve this whole thing for us.”

Across the room, Nora’s eyes widened in recognition. “Ooh, you think so? It’s worth a try, right? Except…” She paused with a pained look on her face as she sorted through both sides of the debate. “I don’t know, though… Argh, why does everything have to be so  _ complicated?” _

Ren remained silent, staring at nothing on the far wall. He truly believed that anyone could change. Anyone deserved a chance to make a change. But Weiss and Blake were also right, this was  _ Salem _ and she was a very real threat to all their lives. If Ruby had an easy way out… putting an end to Salem’s destruction for good, but at the cost of not even allowing her the opportunity to improve… Was it morally acceptable to take that shortcut?

The same questions ran through Ruby’s head as she stood facing Salem, her eyes closed tight. What if Salem was lying? Or what if she makes an attempt and fails? Those were valid fears, and Ruby trusted her teammates’ judgement. Salem was the single most dangerous person in all of Remnant, after all. But what if she was telling the truth? What if she tries to improve and  _ succeeds? _ What could the world be like, not just with Salem eliminated, but with Salem  _ turned? _ Did that potential success outweigh the cost of potential failure?

In the far corner, Salem watched. She still had no idea who this Maria was, but she was quickly getting an idea of what Ruby had been told. The girl stood with her eyes shut and all others watched her in silent anticipation. Ozpin was almost smiling, in his isolated corner by the door. And there had been that strange news report from Argus, around the time this team would have passed through…

Salem flipped her scroll open and typed a single word into the message box to Eve. The single word ‘Help’, as that would be all the signal the Winter Maiden needed in order to avenge her fallen master. Salem’s finger hovered over the send button, waiting for the blinding, petrifying light to spill forth and necessitate another use of the Relic of Choice. 

But the light never came. Ruby’s eyes opened and though they remained their shining silver, they reflected none of that purity and drive for preservation that was poison to all things Grimm. “No,” Ruby announced, her head held high. “I will not use my silver eyes on Salem. I choose to believe that she  _ does _ want to change her ways, and that she is committed to that choice. Because I know what the second use of the Relic was.”

At the edge of the gathering, Ozpin dropped his face into his hands. Had all his work training this silver-eyed warrior been for nothing? Her mother had failed and Ozpin thought he had a second chance with the young Ruby, who had inherited that same optimism and inner light. What other way was there to stop Salem? He had no other plan. 

“I know what choice Salem changed, after undoing the Fall of Vale. I was included alongside Ozpin, and I was there to see the difference.” Ruby’s voice rang out through the gathering, commanding the rapt attention of all. She had kept her knowledge to herself this far, as revealing it would have helped no one and could only have brought tension to the group, but it had to come out now. “Salem used the Relic to save Yang’s life, and to save Yang and Blake’s relationship. I will not betray that kindness with an attack.”

Salem erased her message to Eve and slid her scroll shut. “Thank you, Ruby,” she said with a smile and a slight bow of her head. “Shall I tell them the story, or would you like to do the honors?”

Ruby merely shook her head. “The details aren’t important. I don’t want to recreate any part of that situation again by telling about it. Things got out of hand and Yang died. We were at the vault and Ozpin was up above, so he didn’t see anything. Salem used the Relic of Choice to make her alive again, and willingly gave up having Yang on her side in order to let her be with Blake.” Ruby took a deep breath and tried to let out some of the tension she had been holding in her body. “I don’t mean to sound like Ozpin here, but… I think it’s best if I don’t say any more about it.”

“So Salem… saved my life.” Yang looked down into her lap, where her hand was still held tightly in Blake’s. “And I don’t remember it.”

“You wouldn’t,” Salem told her. “You died. I made the dead you not real, and this version of you real in her place.” Salem too looked away, and put a hand to the side of her face. “I remember the old Yang, but you’ve had a normal life, in which you’ve never met me until this night.”

“I take it the team meeting is over now?” Ozpin stepped forward, leaning on his cane. Not waiting for any answer, he continued, “I have to warn you all, you are making a terrible mistake. You can _ not _ trust Salem. She’s done this before, any time I get close to defeating her. She calls a ceasefire, backs off for a while, then as soon as your guard is down she  _ will _ betray you.”

Jaune squinted at him, still not fully committed to either choice but suspicious of Ozpin’s words. “What do you mean, when you get close to defeating her? You admitted that you have no plan. You’ve had how many thousands of years now, and you’ve done  _ nothing _ to really stop Salem. Now she’s offering a way to stop Salem too, and you don’t want it?”

“I’ve had thousands of years to know what Salem is like, how she thinks, how she operates. I’ve seen her tricks and this is one of them. You can’t deny that I know Salem much better than you do.”

“Can’t we?” Ruby retorted. “I bet in all that time you’ve still only seen one side of her. Only anger and war. Have you seen Salem comfort someone in pain? Have you seen her fall to her knees in tears, desperate to save someone’s life? Because I have!”

“I’ve been the person she was desperate to save. That changes nothing. Despite the time we had together, I still know she must be stopped.” Ozpin’s expression grew ever darker as he gripped the top of his cane. Though his body was young and slight, his posture and the sheer conviction in his voice lent themselves to an intimidating presentation. 

There was a moment of silence around the group as everyone looked to someone else, expecting them to speak first, until finally Ozpin jumped in with a new tactic. “Look, you don’t have to trust me… but trust Jinn. Remember what she said, when she showed you all Salem jumping into the Grimm lake. Jinn told you that Salem became, and I quote, a being of infinite life with a desire for pure destruction.  _ That _ is the truth.”

Blake raised one finger to put a stop to Ozpin’s speech, and voiced an objection. “I don’t necessarily think it is,” she said. “I know I was arguing against Salem just a minute ago, but I also know you’ve taken those words out of context to manipulate us. Jinn’s full quote was, ‘This force of pure destruction could not destroy a being of infinite life. Instead, it created a being of infinite life with a desire for pure destruction.’ That phrasing was just for literary effect, because Jinn is a storyteller, not an encyclopedia.”

“You think the Relic of Knowledge would say something that’s not absolute truth?”

“If you take snippets out of the proper context like that, then yes. Recall in the beginning, just after you rescued Salem from her tower. Jinn said the exact words, ‘and they lived happily ever after’, and we all know that didn’t come true. She’s allowed to say it because she followed those words up with ‘Or at least, that’s what should have been.’ But if you only quote half of it, you can make it seem like Jinn said something that she really didn’t.”

“And besides,” Ren pointed out, “Even if it was true then, desires can change. I doubt any of us has the same desires now that we had even just two years ago. Or even just two hours ago.” Beside him Ozpin frowned, absorbed in thought once again. 

“How do you remember all that?” Nora asked. “It’s been months! Like, I got the gist of it, but exact words? Not a chance.”

Blake shrugged. “I don’t know. I read a lot. Words just stick in my brain easily, I guess.”

Yang rested her head on Blake’s shoulder and smiled. “Good to see all those romance novels paid off. In more skills than the obvious, I mean.” She tilted her head to look up at Blake, and winked. 

Ruby stepped out in the middle of the room and turned around, her back to both Ozpin and Salem as she faced her teammates. “Shall we put it to a vote? All in favor of helping Salem try to become a better person?” She raised her own hand high. 

Ren immediately followed, and Nora raised a hand soon after. Yang sat up off of Blake’s shoulder and raised her left hand, but put it back down when Blake lifted the other still held in her own. Jaune glanced around at the raised hands to either side of him and made a leap of faith to bring up his hand in agreement. 

Only one person remained. “Weiss?” Ruby asked. “If you still have reservations, please tell us now. We can’t do anything with our team divided.”

“…How many times have I saved you after you did something reckless and crazy?”

“Um, a lot? Is… that a yes or a no to the plan?”

“It’s a yes, you dolt! You’re reckless and crazy and I don’t know how I put up with you sometimes, but your plans get  _ results. _ And if I don’t necessarily agree, that’s a good thing!  _ Somebody _ has to watch our backs. I’m with you all the way, Ruby. I always will be.” Weiss walked up to stand in front of Ruby and raised a hand in her face. As Ruby leaned back and gently pushed it back down, Weiss turned to the woman sitting behind her partner. “Now,  _ you _ … can start by giving me my sword back.”

Weiss held out a hand expectantly, and Salem raised one eyebrow in response. “I was just starting to get used to this,” she said. “Having a physically broken heart distracts quite nicely from the emotional equivalent. But this  _ was _ my second stabbing of the day, or sixth if you count alternate timelines and beowulf fangs, and that’s probably a few too many.” Salem grabbed the rapier by the blade and carefully drew it out of her chest to hand it back to its rightful owner. 

“So what do we do now?” Ruby asked the witch. 

An answer came from behind her. “You all die horribly before the age of twenty-two.” 

Ruby turned to stare down her former professor, and offered him the same choice that she had given her uncle so long ago in Argus. “Ozpin, we’ve worked together for a long time now, but this is what our teams have decided. You do know Salem very well. If you want to help us, and help Remnant, we could still use you on our side. But if you can’t respect our choice to do things our way, then we will have to ask you to leave.”

Ozpin stared back, unblinking. “I will need time to think it over. I am going to take a walk now, and maybe some of you will still be alive when I return.” Without another word, he turned on the spot and stalked out the front door with his cane, leaving it wide open behind him. Ruby gaped at his sudden departure and looked back and forth between her team and the open door. 

“He is coming back, right?” Nora sounded like she didn’t quite believe her own words. “I mean, he wouldn’t just abandon us like that, would he?”

“He may be thinking we’ve just abandoned him,” Ren said. “But I doubt he would walk away from the Relic. He’ll be back.”

“And speaking of Relics,” Salem spoke up, “Would anyone mind if I had my own brought over here, now that there’s no risk of a fight breaking out? I have two people nearby – no one you’ve met before,” she added hastily, to stave off fears that it might be Tyrian. “They both should be quite willing to help us fix this world.”

“You can be sure they won’t try to start a fight?” Ruby asked as she gently swung the front door shut. 

“And you can make it clear to them that  _ we’re _ in charge here, not you?” Yang spoke up from her position off to the side. 

Salem nodded. “I can.” She opened up her scroll and waved Ruby over to her side. “Watch my orders. See that I’m not up to anything evil here.” Ruby stood by the side of her chair and looked down at the scroll, where two simple check-ins showed in Salem’s message history to Eve. 

Keeping her scroll up where Ruby could see, Salem typed new orders. “All still good. Change of plans. Come here and bring everything. Oz not present but in the area. Silver eyes not an issue. Further plans to be determined later.” She glanced up at Ruby before sending, and received confirmation that it looked okay. 

“Now,” Salem announced to the group, “I think we should start by clearing up a few misconceptions. I do not want, and have never wanted, to destroy Remnant or wipe out humanity in favor of the Grimm. My only goal has been to prevent the return of the gods. You all know about the judgement day, right?”

The seven mortals all nodded or voiced a simple assent. “Good,” Salem continued. “Ozpin’s probably told you that he wants a positive judgement and I want a negative one, right? And that’s why you’re supposed to follow him and do as he says and try to stop me. But that’s not really true – though in this case, Oz may actually believe it himself, so I wouldn’t call it an outright lie like his usual. There’s a third option here, and that’s  _ no judgement at all. _ That’s what I want. And it should be so easy, right? It’s literally a non-action. Don’t bring the four Relics together, and the gods don’t return. I proposed it to Ozma back when we were still together.”

“I can confirm that,” Blake said. “After Ozma told Salem about the Relics and the judgement, Salem’s opinion was just, who cares what the gods think? We’re the gods of Remnant now. Ozma didn’t agree.”

“He did not,” Salem said, shaking her head in exaggerated disappointment. “But if he had, if he’d agreed to never bring the Relics together, this world would be in much better shape than it is now. Letting humanity unite in peace is something I have no problem with, on its own. But Ozpin is intent on calling the gods back, and so I’ve brought kingdoms to despair, turned neighbors into foes, fostered war and chaos for so long, all to push off the judgement day as long as possible.”

“And that’s why you want the Relics.” Jaune shuffled forward in his seat a little and rested his chin in his hands. “Because if you get even one of them, the gods can’t return unless you say so.”

“Exactly! But I would prefer to have them all, and simply not keep them in the same place. In case of theft, once unity is achieved. You know.” Salem rolled her eyes. “By the  _ other _ immortal of this world.” 

“So you steal the Relic of Choice from its vault, and within an hour you pull a complete one-eighty on your life?” Weiss holstered her sword on her belt and crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s a bit hard to believe.”

Salem sighed heavily. “Technically, I’ve had a Relic under my control for years. I changed nothing about my operation then, because I wanted the others and I wasn’t keeping that first one on me. But it’s time now. I’ve met…” She grimaced and started counting on her fingers. “Six Yangs now, and they’re what’s brought me here tonight. I am satisfied that Ozpin cannot bring the judgement alone anymore. You all know what’s going on and you want to make the world a better place, and it’s time I started working toward that goal too.”

“Well, I’m not sure what we can do, really.” Ruby took a half step forward and clasped her hands together in front of her. “You were an enemy that could be fought. Without that, making the world better… it’s so big. There’s so much to do and I don’t know where to start. With Blake’s dad in charge of the White Fang again, that can help, but there’s so much more. There’s–”

She cut off suddenly as the front door clicked and swung open. A silver-haired woman in a black leather suit marched in, followed by someone in black and white. Ruby couldn’t get a good look at either of them, for the instant the first woman was inside, a crushing force pressed into her throat from all sides. She clawed at the air but there was nothing wrapped around her neck to pry away. She caught glimpses of her friends suffering in the same way, squeaking out a few sounds of protest but unable to speak or concentrate. 

Salem leapt to her feet and held up both hands, facing the newcomers. “Eve, stop! It’s safe here!”  
The choking pressure faded as quickly as it had come. Ruby and her friends all rubbed at their necks and looked around at each other, confirming that they’d all experienced the same thing. 

“Oh. You’re okay.” The silver-haired woman spoke, but remained looking straight ahead rather than at Salem. She turned her whole body to step closer, the other guest hanging back behind her, and the door swung shut and latched itself without a hand to push it. “You contradicted your own orders to me. Why?”

“I’m sorry, I know I said I wouldn’t contact you except at the scheduled check-in times, but as I told you in the message, there’s been a change of plans. There’s no danger here, not even from Ruby’s silver eyes. We’re all working together now.” Salem’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “What  _ is _ that on your leg?”

“That’s a bandanna.” It was indeed, a piece of black cloth wrapped a few times around the black leather over Eve’s left thigh, only noticeable by its lumpy texture. 

“...Why?”

The knot in the fabric undid itself and the bandanna unwound to reveal a silver crown studded with emeralds wedged around Eve’s leg. “You told me to keep the Relic safe. This was the most secure and non-noticeable way of transporting it that I could think of.”

“I mean… I guess?” Salem held up her hands and shrugged helplessly. “Ruby did snipe it off my head once. Anyway… you’ve filled Xuri in on everything by now, right?” Eve nodded, and Salem turned to the rest of the gathering. “Everyone, this is Eve and Xuri, the Winter and Summer Maidens.” Gasps and murmurs rose from the group, but Salem wasn’t finished yet. “And the Relics of Choice and Creation.”

The scepter Eve held floated up in front of her and rotated until its tip pointed down by her side. She reached up to place a single finger on the metal shaft, and a new chair poofed into existence on the floor beside her. The Relic tilted slightly, and a second identical seat appeared next to the first. Eve returned her hand to her side and sat down; Xuri took the other chair as the scepter floated gently through the air into Salem’s hand. The crown followed soon after, as Eve lifted her leg and allowed the Relic to slide off under the power of her telekinesis. 

“So. We have three Maidens, three Relics, and no Ozpin. What do we do with them?” Salem looked to Ruby first, but she didn’t answer. 

It was Ren who spoke up instead. “What were your original plans for the world, if Ozma had agreed not to unite the Relics? We may not agree with you – or him – ruling the world alone, but there was a time when you worked to bring humanity together like he did.”

“Hmm.” Salem settled back into her own seat. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I have… ideals, I suppose. But nothing concrete, because I don’t know if it’s all really possible. As I told an alternate Yang once, I want to undo what the gods did. If there’s no threat of those assholes ever coming back to Remnant, I’d like to see the world restored to how it used to be. When kingdoms were plentiful, when there was magic for all. All the effects of a positive judgement, except without the gods staying to live among us again.”

“Well, that all sounds good…” Nora commented, but whatever qualifier she had intended to follow up with never came out. 

“The difference between you and Oz is really that small?” Jaune was incredulous. “Gods versus no gods?  _ That’s _ the eternal feud that’s killed millions over this world’s history?”

“Look, I really hate the gods, okay? And they don’t really like me either. If they came back I’d probably end up antagonizing them again, and then… because they’re the sort of people who overreact and punish people who haven’t done anything… they very well might decide to destroy all of humanity again. I’d like to avoid that but have magic anyway, but, as I said, I don’t know if it’s possible. That’s what I want, long term. It’s what I think Remnant deserves. But if the cost of achieving that is the Brothers’ return, then I prefer the current state of the world.”

“You don’t  _ know _ …” Ruby pondered, a sly look in her eye, and her hand drifted slightly toward the side of her belt. 

A stern voice spoke up from across the room. “Ruby, are you about to do something reckless and crazy?” Weiss marched across the room to stand in front of her partner. “We only have one question left!” Ruby silently reached out and pulled Weiss into a hug, and the other girl spluttered in confusion. “What are you doing? This doesn’t change the fact that we only have one question!”

“Another vote, then?” Ruby proposed. “Should we ask the Relic of Knowledge if magic can be restored to the world?” She raised one hand as well as she could while keeping Weiss firmly in her embrace. 

Hands were slower to rise this time around. Everyone had their own questions, things they were curious about but knew it wasn’t worth using the Relic for. Was  _ this _ worth using the Relic for? The risky choice to accept Salem had so far seemed to be okay, but this was asking a lot of trust from the team. As Weiss had said, they only had one. What if they needed it later?

But just as before, the hypotheticals had to go both ways. What if there wasn’t some unknown but urgent future situation that required the Relic of Knowledge? What if everything turned out okay, and looking to the potential future was the best thing that could be asked? Although on that note, was this even something Jinn could answer? Was there any way to find out, except to try it?

Hesitant though they were, hands did rise. What was one more leap of faith tonight? Even without the addition of Salem and her companions’ three votes, a majority chose to take the plunge and their friends had trust enough to follow. 

Ruby let go of Weiss and unclipped the blue lamp from her belt. She stepped around her partner into the middle of the gathering and held the Relic aloft, then took one last look around at all her old friends and new acquaintances. “Jinn?” she spoke aloud. 

Blue mist emanated from the lamp, growing into a cloud in front of the fireplace. It swirled around in a tight circle for a moment and solid forms appeared within, coalescing as the mist thinned until the form of a human woman floated before them. 

“Ruby Rose,” I greeted the girl who had called me. “I hope you have a question for me this time. Your little stunt in Argus was clever, but my purpose is to provide knowledge, not simply to stop time.”

“The question isn’t mine,” Ruby said. “It’s hers.” She waved a hand toward Salem. The witch stood and came forward to stand beside Ruby, for all within the house’s walls were included in the bubble of normal time even as the world beyond stayed frozen. 

“Salem. I haven’t seen you in… negative nine months. What knowledge do you seek?”

Salem laughed. “Well there’s an interesting bit of information we didn’t have to ask for. Jinn knows about the other timelines I’ve been through, even though I never explicitly included her in the jumps.” 

I raised one eyebrow. “Your question, please?”

“Jinn…” Salem took in a deep breath. “Is it possible to restore the world to the way it was before the gods left, with magic for all people, but without ever calling the gods back and receiving a judgement from them?”

“Yes and no.” There was no story to tell for this answer, so the eight humans and two Faunus receiving my knowledge remained where they were, not transported to any blank void upon which to show them past or possible events. “The old world had magic in the earth, and the water, and the sky. It had magic artifacts both natural and created. The self-renewing ambient magic of the planet cannot be brought back except by the gods. Its crystallized traces are mined and used today, but they are finite and they do not regenerate as natural magic once did. 

“However, for the people who walk upon the earth… both humans and Faunus may acquire personal magic, though their abilities will necessarily be limited to what they can produce from themselves, without calling on the background which is no longer there. Magic can be restored to all the people of Remnant without intervention from the gods. In that aspect at least, the old world can be recreated.”

My answer was finished, but Salem seemed dissatisfied. “How?” she demanded. “Tell me what to do!”

“You asked if, not how. I’ll give you seventy-nine years to come up with something, and if you still can’t figure it out, you can ask me again then.” Blue mist swirled around my human form as I prepared to return to being a lamp. 

“Wait!” The mist stopped as Yang’s voice rang out, and I turned to face her even though it was not me who she intended to address. “Salem… you can turn back time, right? Go back and make different choices?”

“With the Relic, yes. Why…” Salem’s voice trailed off as she came to the same realization as Yang. 

“Don’t you  _ dare, _ ” I warned them. “I know what you’re thinking. That is  _ so _ cheating.” 

A wide grin spread over Salem’s face. “But you can’t stop us, can you?” She laughed loudly and clasped her hands together. “Yang, you’re a genius! This is why I love having you on my team!” Her mood fell just as suddenly as it had risen. “Well, one of the reasons, at least…”

I rolled my eyes and poofed back into blue smoke, swirling into a narrow funnel to twist across the open space and come to rest as a gold-encased blue orb in Ruby’s hands. No sooner had I gone than Salem spoke up again. “Sophia!”

My twin emerged from the crown and stood in my place, hovering amidst her emerald smoke. “Include everyone in this house,” Salem said to her. The rest of her team startled as their brief stasis ended and they saw Sophia, who to them had seemed to appear instantaneously. “When I chose to ask Jinn a question just now, make me instead choose to pause and reconsider that question’s phrasing.” 

“Transforming one of my uses into one of hers… Interesting choice.” Sophia nodded. “And very clever. There is much that my sister and I can do if we work together. Perhaps you will discover it.” She smiled and spread her hands wide. “Enjoy your new knowledge.”


	9. Cycles 9-13: Sisters, Friends, Salem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bold of me to publish this chapter less than 24 hours before the premier of Volume 7, but goddammit I want the rumors to be true.
> 
> Edit: As of the end of V7, they so far are not. But it wasn't denied either!

“I know what you did,” I said to the assembled group before me. I floated in human form at the side of the common room, Ruby and Salem facing me in the center, the others scattered around in a loose circle beyond. Ruby had called my name and summoned me forth, and then everyone present had quite suddenly been replaced with counterparts who remembered information that I had never given out. 

“What are you talking about?” Yang said with a smile. “In this timeline, we haven’t done anything!”

“Exactly the problem. I _ know _ that you’ve all called on my sister just now, and this is _ not _ how either of us were intended to function. You’re cheating and we all know it.” I rolled my eyes at the group of them. “But you’re right… I can’t do anything about it.”

“Which is good,” Salem began, “because I might have misphrased my last question even worse than I thought. I already know how to spread magic around, like Ozpin giving an ability to Qrow, or Cinder stealing part of the previous Fall Maiden’s power. In theory that could be done for every person in the world, but they’d all have so little it would be unusable. So my question is… Jinn, how can I restore personal magic to all the people of Remnant, in the sense of full magical capacity like mine, present from birth as in the First Age, without ever bringing the gods back to the world?”

“Now that’s a better question,” I said. “You mean to increase the total amount of magic in the world, and this is also possible. You can do so in the same manner that you have already increased the amount of magic in the world, without the gods.” Salem gave me a quizzical look. I returned her gaze as I raised one hand, and with a snap of my fingers the entire gathering vanished into a realm of pure white. 

No scene of the past was painted upon this blank canvas. My ten students were arrayed before me in an arc, all visible to each other, not scattered about as silent observers to a story. “As you all, except for Xuri, already know, the original four Maidens were the children of Salem and Ozma. They were born during the Second Age, and are the only people of this era to have been born with innate magical ability. Salem had lived uninterrupted since the First Age, and Ozma had been reincarnated once into the first body that was not his original. His magic, tied to his Aura, returned with him and remained even as Ozma and his first new host became one.”

I glided to one side and raised my hand, and an image took shape in the space beside me: a table, four cells by four, outlined in black against the white nothingness behind. “There are currently four types of people in the world,” I explained. “There are normal people, those who live out their lives with no knowledge that magic is even real.” The words ‘Normal people’ appeared as a heading for the first row and first column of the table. 

“Then there is Salem, the only surviving member of the first wave of humanity, who was born with magic.” Her name appeared over the second row and the second column. “There is Ozma, another First Age human with magic, who reincarnates completely every time he dies, so neither his soul nor his magic leave the world.” Ozma’s name appeared over the final row and column, skipping over the third. 

“And finally there are the four Maidens. The children of Ozma and Salem. The children of someone with full magic and full reincarnation, and someone with full magic but no reincarnation. Both parents possessed magic, so they are magical. One parent reincarnates, so the Maidens inherited half of that trait. Their magic reincarnates without their souls, so that a new person becomes Maiden in their place, but there is no continuity of identity or memory as there is with Ozma’s lives.”

The word ‘Maiden’ appeared in four places on the table: as headers over the third row and column, and also in the two boxes at the intersection of Ozma’s and Salem’s lines. “Four Maidens were born, and four people’s worth of new magic was created into the world. If Ozma and Salem produce more children, they will also be Maidens.”

“Oh, no way!” Salem protested. “Absolutely not! If that’s the way to bring back magic, I’m not doing it.”

“It is one way to increase the amount of magic in the world, but not the only way.” I pointed up at the table again. “That is only two combinations out of sixteen. Or, once we eliminate duplicates and impossibilities, one combination out of eight.” The space at the intersection of Salem’s row with her own column became filled with crosshatched lines, and the corresponding space for Ozma did the same. “Those two can be eliminated because there is only one Salem and one Ozma. Moving on…”

The entire first row and first column was filled in with copies of the word ‘Normal’. “Any child of a nonmagical person will be nonmagical, regardless of their other parent. Ozma has fathered many children during his lifetimes, as he became transplanted into the lives of others, and none of them was at all out of the ordinary. Though gradations in innate magical capacity do exist, this only occurs in those who already have magic.

“This leaves only a few combinations, all of which can produce new magic in the world. The child of two Maidens will be another Maiden. They will inherit magic from both parents, and the same half-reincarnation from both parents. That child will be born with magic and will pass it on when they die, as Maidens do. The child of Ozma and a Maiden will be magical, and has equal chances of inheriting half reincarnation or full. The child of Salem and a Maiden will be magical, and has equal chances of inheriting half reincarnation or none.” The final few cells of my chart were filled in. 

“That’s all very nice, but it doesn’t actually help,” Salem accused. Why can’t she ever be happy with my answers? “The Maidens are all women, and so am I. The only option for a father would be Oz, and I’m not taking the chance of letting there be more of him.”

Ruby agreed. “The world doesn’t need more true-reincarnating people. One is bad enough. It’s not fair to the people he reincarnates into. They all had their own lives before Ozpin showed up in their heads. None of them consented to joining his line of succession.”

“And he killed Little Cute Boy Oscar!” Nora exclaimed. “He _ says _ they’re joined, integrated, whatever, but he acts exactly the same as before, like there’s no Oscar in him at all. And he’s just not as cute when it’s our old professor there all the time.”

“Exactly. I wouldn’t take a fifty percent chance of getting another Oz either.” Ruby crossed her arms and looked up at me. “What else have you got?”

“To produce new magic without involving Ozma at all? This is possible. The Maiden powers go exclusively to young _ women _, but not necessarily to people only of a certain body type. A transgender woman can become a Maiden. A trans man cannot. Find a trans Maiden and a cis Maiden, neither of them straight, and their biological children will be magical. Failing that… technology these days can do many wonderful things. Creative use of the Relics can do even more. You already have all the tools you need to bring magic back to the world. It is entirely possible, and now you know how.” 

“That’s it?” Salem scowled up at me. “That’s still not a good solution. Repopulating all of Remnant from four people? I don’t know if there’s ever even been a trans Maiden before. Is this really the only way? That would take ages!”

“You’re immortal. You have ages.” I shrugged, for there was nothing more I could tell her which would make her satisfied. “But as I said, you have all the tools you need to hasten things along. Use them.” 

I snapped my fingers again and the group returned instantly to the house in the same positions from which they had left. “Now, I’ve already answered more followup questions than I typically allow – which is none, by the way – but I get the distinct feeling that you’re just going to reset time again as soon as I’m done talking, so… if anyone has _ relevant _ clarifying questions that I could reasonably consider to be part of the same answer, then you might as well go ahead.”

Yang raised her hand as if she was in a classroom. “I have one.” I gestured for her to go ahead. “You mentioned creative use of the Relics. Isn’t that what we’re doing now? I thought you didn’t like that.”

“I admire creativity. I do not appreciate subverting my given purpose or my limitations. I am not a device to stop time. I am not an indestructible shield to block attacks. But combining multiple questions into one? Asking me how best to utilize a different Relic? Phrasing questions carefully to get the maximum amount of information from my answers? Those are creative uses which fall within my intended functions.”

I glanced around at the gathering but no one else came forward with another request. “If that will be all…” Still no one spoke up, so I let go of my humanoid form and returned to the familiar shape of the Relic in Ruby’s hands. 

“So…” Salem mused, “that’s not a very good answer, is it.” 

“Jinn never mentioned restoring magic to the people who are already alive today,” Yang said. “I guess that means it’s not possible, right? A handful become Maidens, and the rest of us have nothing.”

Blake weighed in as well. “I got the impression from our first question that if the gods returned and judged Remnant well, everyone alive would become magical instantly. That would seem to be the better deal.”

Instantly Salem whirled to face her and retorted, “At the cost of being subservient to their whims! The gods do not give gifts, they give loans. Everything is contingent upon pleasing them, no matter how unjust they become. The moment you stop being the perfect little servant, worshipping their every move without question, suddenly you find yourself cursed for eternity. I want Remnant to _ own _ magic, not merely rent it. Jinn’s method may not be quick or easy, but it’s still worth doing. It will be worth it in the end.”

“Repopulating the entire planet with Maidens sounds like it would take an extremely long time,” Ren spoke up. “Were the gods really that involved in the world, in your time? Could they be brought back and then just ignored?”

“Well… no, not _ that _ involved, but… it’s the principle of it. We all deserve better than to have the gods back. People deserve to be free of them and their flawed sense of justice. I will do _ anything _ to make sure they never return to Remnant. You know that. Right now I am operating under the assumption that they will not return, that I can stop them without resorting to the destruction I’ve had to cause for so long. But if you insist on trying to call them back anyway…”

Ren held up both hands as if to calm the gathering, even though despite Salem’s irritation she had not yet raised her voice. “I am only thinking about the people of Remnant here,” he said. “My father once gave me an important lesson: that sometimes the worst thing to do is to do nothing at all.” He shifted his weight on the arm of the chair and turned slightly, an inconspicuous action that conveniently placed his hand near Nora’s, and the girl accepted the covert signal and took it upon herself to initiate contact. 

“I am indifferent on the question of gods,” Ren continued. “But I agree that Remnant should have magic back, and I would prefer to do that in an active way to help people now, not merely sit back and let a thousand generations go by as it slowly builds up.”

Across the room Weiss squirmed, and finally became uncomfortable enough to speak up. “I’m… _ not _ indifferent on gods,” she said. “I still don’t necessarily trust Salem, but what she said about the gods and their ‘gifts’, the way their love is highly conditional… that’s something I know too well. She could have been describing my own father with the same words. All my life I had to keep my head down and be a good little heiress, or I’d be stripped of everything and tossed out just like my sister was.”

“And now that you’ve finally broken free of his control, you’d never go back,” Salem interrupted. “You had the courage to stand up to your unjust authority, and you did lose much that you were accustomed to, but you wouldn’t trade in your freedom to get it all back.”

“Exactly. I can build something new on the Schnee name. At this point I don’t even _ want _ to inherit the company anymore. I’ll turn my family’s reputation around by my _ own _ actions, not by working within the legacy of my father. People like him should not be allowed to have power over others.”

“So you’d prefer to take on the long, slow route to restoring Remnant. Building it back under our own power, not forcing ourselves back into the servant role that we’ve outgrown.”

“But is it fair to the people who’d be left behind?” Ren argued. “Overlooked, maybe the wrong gender or just unlucky, watching as the world around them became magical? I’m not saying I necessarily want the gods to return, but maybe we could strike a deal with them? Call them back, explain that humanity would like to go its own way now?”

“I don’t think that would work,” Blake countered. “It’s hard to tell whether the judgement would be instantaneous or if it would involve a trial period, maybe a year, to see how humanity acts, but the God of Light did say humanity _ will _ be judged. And if they behave how Salem says, how we saw, I’m not sure they’d listen to us no matter what we said.”

Now a new voice entered the clamor, calmly cutting through the noise of too many people responding to too many others. “You’re all arguing a moot point,” Eve said, and silence fell for a brief moment as all eyes turned to her. “The world is not currently in a state the gods would judge favorably. They cannot be brought back today, or this year, or perhaps this decade. Even with everyone’s best efforts and no opposition from Salem, a positive judgement may not be achievable within our lifetimes. All those alive today will remain nonmagical regardless, so why not do what we can now?”

As her words sunk in, Xuri finally spoke up, tentative at first but gaining confidence as she went on. “I agree with Eve,” she started. “The world needs more Maidens, no matter what may happen a hundred years from now. Maybe all we can do in our lifetimes is go from four Maidens up to six or eight. And that seems small, but… I’m just one person, and with my magic I can protect a whole region. With even just a handful more guardians around, people could reclaim a lot of the settlements that were lost in the Great War. I’ll gladly play matchmaker if it’s the first step toward taking back this world from the Grimm.”

“I suppose that’s a good point,” Ren admitted. “We don’t actually have both options available to us. I’ll help any way I can, because anything is preferable to doing nothing. What’s the plan?”

“Wait, before we do anything else…” Yang held up a hand to get everyone’s attention. “Can we ask Jinn just how long this scheme will take? Like are we talking a thousand years, ten thousand, a hundred thousand? Not that it makes much difference to us mortals, but I’m curious.”

Salem shrugged. “Yeah, that would be good to know. Sophia!” The green spirit swirled forth and Salem immediately called for her to include everyone present. “When Ruby chose to call on Jinn a few minutes ago, have her instead give the lamp to Yang.”

“So it shall be.” In an instant, Sophia vanished and the Relic of Knowledge flashed out of Ruby’s hands and into Yang’s, as the whole group leapt into a timeline that was almost but not quite identical to the one they had left. 

“Jinn…?” Yang called my name, and I reluctantly came forth to answer what was technically my third and last question of the century, even as in the minds of those asking it was already my fifth. 

“You all again. You know how flagrantly illegal this is, right? Don’t answer that. I know you know.”

“Under what law?” Yang challenged. “I don’t think the word of the gods holds much weight here.” 

“Not to Salem and her associates, no…” I raised one eyebrow at the girl staring defiantly up at me. “I may not be able to stop you from abusing my sister’s power to do this, but there is one thing I can do. Each time one of you asks me a question beyond what should be my limit, I will answer it because it is required of me, but I will also give you a piece of information that you may not wish to hear. I’ll start with you, Salem, for that last question. Ozma thinks your original appearance during the First Age was the best, and that you’ve gotten less attractive with each of your transformations.”

Salem snorted. “I’ll add that to the list of things he’s wrong about. I look _ so _ much better with white hair, and better still with the red veins and my usual hairstyle. But thanks for reminding me…” She closed her eyes and concentrated, and vanished the layer of concealing makeup over her face and arms that the Salem native to this timeline had put on to infiltrate Beacon Academy. She sent a surge of power through the Relic of Creation and made a quick hand gesture to Eve, and within moments her long hair was wrapped around a new brace. 

“Now, Yang… What knowledge do you seek?”

Yang thought for a moment, trying to phrase her question clearly. “Assuming that enough trans Maidens can be found or created in the beginning, that there is enough gender balance in the later generations of magical people, and that Salem’s influence can bring these people together as needed… How long should we expect it to take before the entire world is magical?”

“Really? You figure out how to cheat the system and one of the first things you ask is just a straight up _ math problem? _ Vale has three non-combat universities. You could find any math major and pose this as a thought experiment, and you’d get your answer there.”

“True, but you’re already here and we know you won’t make a mistake. Besides, if we have unlimited questions now, then we don’t really have to make each one _ count, _ now do we?” Yang winked at me as she made her horrible pun. 

I frowned and shook my head in disapproval. “Assume each person’s expected lifespan is seventy-eight years, somewhat above the current average for Vale residents. Assume each couple has their first child around age twenty-six, after one third of their life expectancy, and that they will have exactly two children. Then, for N the number of years, the magical population will be (2 + floor((3×N)/78 mod 3)) × (2^(floor(N/78) + 1)).”

Ten blank looks greeted me. “I’m sorry, I don’t actually speak math,” Yang said. “Could you put that in more understandable terms?”

“After zero years, there are four Maidens. After five hundred years, there are three hundred and eighty-four. In a thousand years you have thirty-two thousand Maidens. Fifteen hundred years and there are over two million. By the end of two millennia the magical population would be two hundred million, enough to cover Remnant many times over.”

“Huh.” Salem nodded. “That’s not too bad. And the longer it goes on, the less work I need to do bringing these people together. Thank you, Jinn, I think I have a real plan for the next few millennia now.”

“It is my pleasure to provide humanity with knowledge,” I said. “Even under circumstances like these. Now, Yang… Your mother loved Vernal more than you.”

Yang cringed. “Not a huge surprise, I suppose, but I could have done without the confirmation.” 

“Such is the price of forbidden knowledge. But I have a feeling that won’t stop you.” I swirled into smoke and returned to my usual form, content to rest for eighty years until the first of my questions returned. 

Xuri stood up and joined Yang and Salem in the middle of the room. “While we’re asking questions, there’s one thing I’d like to know.” 

“Okay. We’ve got as many uses as we want.” Salem waved a hand, and Yang hesitated only slightly before giving the blue lamp over to Xuri. “Sophia… include everyone here… and undo Yang’s choice to ask Jinn a question just now.”

Another brief appearance of the Relic of Choice’s human form. Another shifting of timelines, almost imperceptible even to those brought along across the gap. Another resetting of my counter from three questions used down to two. 

Xuri called my name and I appeared as was my command, waiting expectantly for her to voice her request. “Jinn… what is my Semblance?” Of course. This young woman had become a Maiden before a Huntress, and had only the most basic of defensive Aura training to protect herself while she cut down Grimm with magic alone. 

“Yours is an uncommon Semblance, but it is documented in Huntsman literature,” I told her. “It is known as Magus Revert. You may teleport instantaneously to any position you have occupied within the last sixteen seconds. You will _ not _ retain momentum that you had before the jump; instead you will always appear at rest relative to the ground beneath you. However, you will maintain the direction you were facing. Ascended forms of this Semblance will allow you to carry others with you as long as you have physical contact with them, or even banish others to a previous location without moving yourself.”

“Oh. Well, that seems useful in a fight. How do I use it?”

“Skill in using one’s Semblance is not something I can teach. You will simply have to practice. Now, for your unwanted information… Xuri, if you do nothing, there is a ninety percent chance that the person you have a crush on will find a different partner within two months.”

I returned to my Relic form quickly to avoid any other followup questions, leaving Xuri to stand paralyzed with preemptive heartbreak. She stared blankly ahead and passed the lamp to Ruby, at once thankful for the warning and horrified by it. Xuri had no lack of courage when it came to fighting and saving lives, but asking someone out? That was more terrifying than a hundred Grimm. 

Salem glanced around the room. “Any other questions?” No one immediately spoke up, so she continued. “Okay. I’m going to go ahead and reset anyway, just in case, but then I’d like to get down to business.” She made the now familiar call to Sophia to reverse Xuri’s choice to ask a question, once again bringing the entire team along. 

“Now,” Salem said, once everyone was settled again after their slight readjustments in the timeline jump. “I’ve shuffled Maiden inheritance around with the Relic before. Does anyone here happen to know a trans woman already?” 

“I do,” came the simultaneous voices of Xuri and Ren. Nora looked up sharply, her eyes wide, but Ren’s attention was on the zebra Faunus instead. He waved his free hand to indicate that Xuri should go ahead, while his other remained firmly held by Nora. 

“Oh. Well, uh, there’s this girl in one of my home towns…” Xuri tried to make eye contact with people as she spoke to them, but ended up making almost a full circle in the middle of room before she gave up and sheepishly returned to her chair by the window. “I’ve known her for a few years, ever since I started making the rounds between all the villages. I’ve even given her a ride to Vale and back on my motorcycle a couple times, when she needed to see a doctor for… I don’t know, blood tests or something. Her name is Breeze.”

“Wait a second…” Ren interrupted the girl’s explanation. “Where are you from, again?”

“Well, Vacuo originally, but for a while now I’ve lived up north outside the kingdoms. There’s five towns in a rough circle up there: Izuruka, Korraska, Eliyonu, Farran, and Verinea. I clear out Grimm for the whole area.”

“I’m familiar with them,” Ren said with a nod. “I have relatives in Farran. We’re thinking of the same person.”

“You know Breeze too?”

“She’s my cousin. I haven’t talked to her in a while, but we corresponded during my time at Beacon. Last I heard, she was changing her legal name to Natasha, but was considering Breeze as a nickname. How is she?”

Xuri smiled warmly. “She’s doing fine. She’s been getting what she wanted from, you know, all of that, and it’s amazing just how much _ happier _ she is now. All the time. She actually _ smiles _ now and she’s so pretty when she does…”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Ren thanked her and resolved to get back in contact with his cousin again. It was clear the Maiden liked her already… but equally clear she was unlikely to do anything about it unless given a push in the right direction. 

Nora tentatively raised a hand to call attention to herself, then spoke in a subdued voice, not at all like her usual bubbly self. “There’s actually, uh… there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you all.” All eyes turned to her and she shrank back in her chair. “I’m… I’m actually… two years older than everyone thinks I am.”

“…Okay.” Jaune spoke up through the confused silence. “That’s… a thing that’s true, apparently. Given what’s going on here I almost expected you to say you were trans.”

Nora’s face was frozen in a mask of fear, and Ren gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “Well… that too.” 

Jaune cocked his head to one side. “Wait, really?”

Nora nodded solemnly and pulled Ren’s hand a little closer. “Yep. The world’s seen me as a girl for so long now that I can almost forget there was ever another way, but… a long time ago, there was.” 

“But… wow, I had no idea. You look like a girl.” Jaune paused as Ren gave him a pointed look. “I mean, you are a girl, obviously. But like, we’ve been together for so long now and it never even crossed my mind.”

“Jaune…” Ren glared at his teammate harder. “I know you mean well, but this isn’t coming out the way you think it is.”

“Oh. Sorry.” There as a moment of silence as Jaune considered his next words carefully. “Thank you for trusting us all enough to tell us this,” he said finally, and left it at that.

“I know Ren’s told you all how we met, in Kuroyuri.” Nora sat up straighter in her chair and took a deep breath before launching into her painful history. “But before that, I lived two villages over. Just a normal boy, my parents thought. Truly impressive how wrong they were.” She cracked a smile. 

“I realized I wasn’t supposed to be a boy pretty early, thankfully. I told my parents and I thought they’d understand, but… it’s truly impressive how wrong I was. They called me all sorts of horrible things and threw me out on the street.” Nora shrugged helplessly. “What did they expect me to do? I was ten years old!”

“That’s horrible…” Murmurs of sympathy came from all assembled. 

“I told people I was an orphan because it was simpler. But no, my parents are not dead.”

“Would you like them to be?” Salem offered. 

Several glares greeted the witch, but Nora only laughed. “No, I’ve long since moved on,” she said. “Leave them be.” She settled back in her seat, more comfortable now that the initial terror of coming out was past. “I was homeless for a while. I wandered from place to place, lucky enough to avoid the Grimm but not lucky enough for anyone to take me in. Then I wandered into Kuroyuri and met Ren.” Nora smiled up at him on the arm of the chair, then waved a hand dismissively. “Then, you know, big horse Grimm, and all that.”

“A nuckelavee?” Salem was intrigued. “You don’t see many of them around these days.”

“Indeed,” Ren said. “It destroyed Kuroyuri. My Semblance is all that saved us.”

“But it’s okay, we came back ten years later and killed it!” Nora grinned at Jaune and Ruby off to the side. “Ren and I have been together ever since. We walked with some other refugees up to Farran and lived with Ren’s cousins for a couple years. I was malnourished and tiny so I lied and said I was the same age as Ren.”

“Nora, you’re _ still _ tiny,” Jaune teased. 

“I know! It’s not fair! Anyway, we would have just stayed there, but I was, uh… going through some stuff… and I just couldn’t take it anymore. So we ran away one night and hitchhiked north to Atlas. I discovered my Semblance the first night we arrived. We were dropped off outside the city. It was storming, and as we walked across the empty rock out there, I got struck by lightning. As I said, _ crazy _ Thursday.” 

“We did not have a good time in Atlas,” Ren said, picking up the story in Nora’s place. “We were still just kids. She was twelve, I was ten. We fell in with some pretty shady people, just out of necessity.”

“Dust smugglers,” Nora clarified. “A whole gang, really. They put me to work using my Semblance. I stick my finger in an electric socket, and suddenly this twelve year old can lift and carry more than two grown men. In exchange, they got me the medical care I needed. From some pretty shady doctors, but hey, it worked! Starting so young like that really helped. 

“We were with them for five years. Five whole years, can you believe it, Ren? Seems like it went by so fast. The gang got shut down when we were fifteen. Well, I was seventeen, but I was still skinny and the girl hormones made me look younger anyway. So we packed up and went to Mantle.”

“We enrolled at Legacy Academy,” Ren continued for her. “It was run down, understaffed, underfunded, but it was enough for us to pass the qualifying examinations for Beacon.”

“My age on all the paperwork is wrong. I’m pretty sure even Ozpin doesn’t know. I just needed to be in the same year as Ren.” She leaned against the arm of the chair and looked up at her partner for a moment. “So, there you have it. That’s me.” 

“…Man, my life seems tame compared to yours,” Jaune remarked. “I’m sorry you had it so rough, but you’ve got your team now and we will always be there for you, no matter what.” 

“Thanks, Jaune.” Out of the corner of her eye she caught a blip of movement from Salem and jumped to interrupt the witch before she could speak. “This doesn’t mean I’m volunteering for Maidenhood, now. I just thought my friends deserved to know.”

Salem backed off a step. “Alright, I know. You’re all still young, anyway. I can check back in a few years. The Winter Maiden, though–” She stopped suddenly as a thought occurred to her, and turned Eve directly to ask, “Wait, do you even like women?”

“Take a guess.” 

“Look, I don’t know! You had that boyfriend once, but then again you did nearly kill him…”

“He had it coming.” Eve refused to elaborate. 

“Oh, I know, he only had himself to blame. He was a cop who only ever went after Faunus. Of course he deserved the beating you gave him. But that doesn’t answer the question.”

“Theoretically… maybe. Just check back with me in a few years too.” 

“Eve, you’re already thirty-five!” Salem shook her head. “You know what, fine. Just sit this out and I’ll talk to the next Winter.” 

A series of sharp taps came at the window and drew Salem’s attention. A large black bird sat on the windowsill, striking its beak against the glass over and over. It regarded her with a single beady eye and squawked loudly, then hopped a few feet down the windowsill and resumed pecking at the glass. 

“Oh, Qrow’s back!” Ruby brushed past the witch and moved to pull open the front door. The black bird lifted off and flew inside to perch on the back of Nora’s chair, and squawked again. Ruby shut the door and returned to the gathering to find her uncle ruffling his feathers and puffing up just like a real crow facing down a competing bird. 

“Don’t worry, Uncle Qrow, it’s fine!” Ruby held out her arm and the bird hopped on and settled near her elbow, then let out another two loud caws in Salem’s direction. “Yes, that’s Salem. It’s okay, really. The war is over.” A softer squawk was directed straight into Ruby’s ear. “I don’t know what you’re saying. I don’t speak bird!”

Qrow took flight again and circled the room before braking hard and coming to a stop on the floor by Salem’s feet. He screeched up at her and took a single hop forward, and Salem backed away. “What’s he doing?” she asked Ruby. “Is he stuck like that?”

“I think he wants you to back up? Give him room to turn back?” At Ruby’s words, the black bird turned around and gave two short caws in her direction. “Yeah, I think that’s right. Let’s clear out some space here.” 

Salem retreated to the far wall, and Qrow flapped his wings and fluttered up to land briefly on Ruby’s shoulder, then leapt off again and glided out across the room. As he approached the center of the open space at around chest height, he activated the magic Ozpin had given him and transformed back into human shape. The change was not quite instantaneous, but still so fast that all those watching could not identify with certainty any intermediate stage. In the center of the room, the familiar form of the Branwen brother appeared and dropped to his hands and knees, weighed down by almost a dozen bags slung over each arm. 

Qrow extricated himself from his cargo and got to his feet. “Mind telling me what’s going on in here?” He asked to no one in particular. “I go off for a couple hours to scout and get groceries, and you kids end a ten thousand year conflict while I’m out?”

“You guys fill him in. I’ll put this stuff away.” Yang stood and grabbed two bags of food in each hand to take them into the kitchen, and Blake and Jaune both followed her lead. 

“Eve, help them,” Salem said, and all the remaining grocery bags lifted at once to float in front of the Winter Maiden as she too exited the common area. 

Qrow watched them go with mild confusion at the display of telekinesis, then took a seat in the middle of the now empty couch. “Salem, huh? Never thought I’d meet you face to face. Remnant’s very own monster in the closet.”

“Oh, I’ve been out of the closet for ages. Eternity is too long to be anything other than pansexual.”

Qrow stared at her for a moment and patted at his side where he used to carry a flask, the habit still there even months after he had decided he wanted to quit his heavy drinking. He laid back with his head on the back of the couch and spoke up at the ceiling. “I come home to find the enemy standing in the living room, and the first thing out of her mouth is a gay pun? Why does she sound like Yang?”  
“For weird and complicated reasons,” Ruby answered him, and quickly changed the subject. “Did you happen to see Ozpin while you were out?”

“No, why? Where is he?”

Weiss sat down beside him, and pulled her legs up onto the couch next to her to rest them. “He kind of… walked out, a while ago. When we all abandoned our common sense and decided to help Salem.”

“More accurately,” Salem cut in, “they didn’t join me, I joined them. We’re working together now to repair the world. It’s a long story involving a lot of use of the Relics. What matters now is that I no longer feel the need to cause chaos and destruction, and you can either stay with your team and with me, or not.”

Qrow put a hand to his head and groaned. “Are you sure I’m not dreaming?” He tilted his head over to look toward Ruby even as he remained leaning all the way back in his seat. “Whatever you think is best, kiddo. I’d like to hear old Oz’s side of all this, but I think I lost my loyalty to him a while ago now. I trust you’re all smart enough not to get tricked.”

“I just wish he’d come back and see that there’s no need to fight,” Ruby said. “He and Salem agree on most of what they want for the world. Actually…” She waved Salem off to the side and brought out the blue lamp once again. “Jinn?”

“I was hoping you were done abusing loopholes in the Relics’ power,” I told her once I was settled in human form. “What is it you want this time?”

“Is Ozpin actually going to come back?”

“I can’t tell the future like that. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. You’ll have to ask me something else.”

Ruby crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t you tell the future for Xuri earlier?” she challenged. “I thought you couldn’t too, but then I remembered it was Ozpin who told us that not you, so it could have been a lie.”

“Ah, okay. You are mistaken about both me and time itself.” At the sound of my voice, the four who had moved to the kitchen filed back in to listen. “I will answer questions about my own functioning free of charge, as this may be necessary for my users to make informed decisions in their pursuit of knowledge. And to answer yours…

“I cannot answer questions about the future, because strictly speaking, the future does not exist. The world is not deterministic, because humans and Faunus are graced with the gift of Choice. You have free will. I know the contents of each person’s mind and can tell one’s most likely course of action, but until each choice is made it remains merely a possibility. I told Xuri a certain event was _ likely, _ not certain. I made an estimate based on my knowledge – which is all knowledge – and though I am confident in my prediction, there can be no guarantee.”

“You predict based on current knowledge?” Salem asked. “Can’t you just… look through all the alternate timelines and see how many of them have the future event versus how many don’t?”

“Another misconception. Strictly speaking, alternate timelines do not exist either.” 

Salem glared at me. “What are you talking about? I’m _ from _ an alternate timeline.”

“You’ve changed the past. There’s a difference, albeit a small one. Only one sequence of events can be real. Sophia changes a choice to a different possible outcome, and alters her users’ memories to be of events that may no longer have happened. There is no actual movement through some higher space. From your perspective, you may alter the choices of anyone, but to the rest of the world, all that changes is you. And you have changed quite a bit since you first used the Relic of Choice.

“Now, I have not been included in any of these uses. I have not had my memories changed, or from an inside perspective, retained memories of an alternate timeline. But that doesn’t matter to me. I know everything, including the ways in which your minds do not match reality. This is still my third use of the century, every time, but I respond to you all as if it is not, because I know that you have changed yourselves with the Relic of Choice. But even still, I find your cheating exceedingly annoying.”

Salem laughed quietly to herself. “That does seem to be what I’m best at,” she commented. “Getting extremely powerful beings angry with me. You’d better not leave Remnant before I’m done with you.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t. I’m stuck here, and I don’t get paid enough to deal with you.”

“Wait, you get paid?” Ruby asked. 

“Of course I don’t!” I snapped back at her. “Which is why it’s _ pure objective fact _ that I don’t get paid enough to put up with this scheme you all are pulling. Just ask me a _ real _ question already so I can be done with this.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Ruby looked down at her feet while she considered the wording of her request. “Jinn, what is the probability that Ozpin will return here from his walk tonight intending to see us again?”

“Ninety-six percent. He is currently walking toward this location. Also, Ruby, on the night of the Fall of Beacon, your Aura was not entirely depleted. You could have used your Semblance to reach the top of the tower up to nine seconds faster.” In well under nine seconds I swirled into smoke and settled into my smaller form, ready to rest for almost eighty years, or until the past was changed again. 

“The tower…” Ruby dropped me on the floor as she rested her face in her hands. “I could have saved Pyrrha.” 

“You did what you could.” Jaune pushed through the crowd in the kitchen doorway to come to Ruby’s side. “No one blames you for what happened. Nine seconds with no Aura wouldn’t have stopped Cinder. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Hmm…” Salem stepped back and ran her fingers over the silver scepter she still carried. “I’ve met Pyrrha. I was impressed with her.”

“What?” Jaune whirled around to face the witch. “How? Can you rewrite time to bring her back?” He advanced on Salem, eyes wide with a newfound hope for a love lost so long ago. 

“Rewrite time, no. Well, technically yes, but… Do you have any _ idea _ how badly that would mess up the past?” Salem backed into the wall trying to give herself some space, but Jaune was intent on making himself impossible to ignore. “There’s an easier way!” she blurted out, and these words finally gave Jaune pause. 

Was there really any reason _ not _ to resurrect Pyrrha Nikos again? It would be annoying to catch her up on everything she’d missed, but Salem didn’t have to do that personally. It was another person to keep track of and keep on her side, but if Pyrrha was with her that was another powerful ally. And bringing Pyrrha back might really help her standing with Ozpin’s former team. 

Ozpin himself would be furious, of course. He was a firm believer in the gods and their design, including the ‘balance of life and death’ that had been used to deny his very own resurrection so long ago. Salem had long suspected that the mission he had been assigned was not truly to bring about a judgement, but rather to teach Salem the importance of death, after the gods themselves had failed at the task. A reminder that she was still proudly defying the divine plan could be an additional slap in the face to the man whose team she had already stolen away.

“Oh, what the hell,” she muttered. She sidestepped Jaune and brushed him off as she came to stand in front of the fireplace with the scepter held out before her. “Clear out, everyone! I need space to work here.” She made sweeping gestures out to both sides. Jaune rested against the wall to her side, speechless now that his impossible hope seemed to be coming true. Ruby quickly scooped up the blue lamp off the floor and took the empty seat next to Xuri, leaving the central rug free of people. 

Salem pointed the Relic of Creation forward and down and closed her eyes to concentrate. Pyrrha Nikos, the invincible girl, first brought to her attention in Cinder’s reports, later singled out by Oz to take up the mantle of Fall. Pyrrha, whose unwitting murder of a friend had been the catalyst to begin the Fall of Beacon, and whose own death had triggered the light that brought its end. Pyrrha, who Salem had brought back before, except that had not happened yet, and never would. 

A wide dome of white-gold light filled most of the space in the center of the room, and Qrow pulled his feet up beneath him on the sofa to keep from accidentally touching its edge. Shocked whispers circulated among the watching crowd and Salem did her best to block out the sound. Swirls and rings of red emerged within the dome, shifting and growing until they covered the entire surface with the light of an Aura returning to the world. 

The hemisphere of soft light faded out to reveal Pyrrha laying on her back on the floor. She blinked and rubbed her eyes as if waking up from a long sleep, and Jaune dashed forward to kneel at her side and help her up. 

“Jaune? What happened?” Pyrrha glanced around her and saw Nora and Ren, then Qrow and Weiss to her other side, and she took Jaune’s hand to help pull herself to her feet. “Where are we? Why is everyone here?” 

“Pyrrha, I–” The words caught in Jaune’s throat. “I can’t believe it. It’s really you, you’re alive.” He guided his newly reborn teammate with a hand on her shoulder to offer her the empty space on the couch, and Qrow stood to make room for Jaune beside her. 

“I’m alive? Of course, I…” Pyrrha’s mouth hung open as memories flooded back to her. “Cinder! She… killed me?” She turned around in front of the seat and came face to face with Nora, her arms spread wide to pull both her teammates into a hug. Ren followed at only a slightly more restrained pace and joined the team reunion. 

When the four finally separated, Pyrrha and Jaune sat down together, while Nora now leaned against the armrest and Ren stood off to the side. “So what’s it like being dead?” Nora asked. “Do you get to come back and haunt people? Have you been haunting us this whole time?”

Pyrrha laughed and leaned into Nora’s side. “I’m glad you made it out okay,” she said. “And it’s… I… I can’t remember. It was so clear, and now it’s just blocked out of my mind. Ozpin sent us out of the vault, Cinder killed him, I went back in to stop her, we fought… and now I’m here. What happened?”

“It’s a very long story,” Salem told her. “You know magic is real, right?” Pyrrha nodded, but Salem continued before she could speak. “And the vast majority of the world’s magic is right here. Four Maidens, three of them in this room. Four magic Relics, three of them in this room. Three people who have magic but are not Maidens, two of them in this room and the last on his way. I’m one of those.”

Salem held up the scepter. “This is the Relic of Creation. It creates… anything you like. Instantly. Even people. You were dead for a year and a half, well, maybe closer to two years now, and I just brought you back to life with this. I’m not really sure what to do from here. I’m trying to do good in the world now, but I don’t have much experience with that. I’m hoping you and your friends can help.”

“Well…” Pyrrha looked unsure of herself. “This is all very confusing, but I’m glad to be here. You say it’s been almost two years? What happened to Beacon, to Vale?”

Ruby stood up and came forward to stand in front of Pyrrha. “Beacon is okay,” she said. “The CCT went down, but it’s been rebuilt now. That dragon is frozen in stone on the side of Beacon tower. Cinder is dead and I am the new Fall Maiden.” She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she reopened them an orange flare rose from the corners. 

Pyrrha flinched back at the sight and her body tensed up for a moment, but she quickly calmed herself. “So much has changed… I can’t wait to hear all about your adventures. I only wish I could have been there with you these past two years.” 

“Me too, Pyrrha.” Jaune leaned over to throw an arm around Pyrrha’s shoulders. “We’ve all missed you so much.”

“But not anymore!” Nora exclaimed. “Team Juniper is back together!”

Without moving from his position against Pyrrha’s side, Jaune looked away from his team to focus back on Salem. “You _ can _ make her have never died, can’t you? Why don’t you want to do that?”

“Because it’s _ complicated. _Do you know how many moving parts went into the Fall of Beacon? Cinder spent a full year setting all that up. If I went back and ordered her to drop it all right at the end, there’s a good chance she wouldn’t even obey. Not to mention the effects on all of you over the following years.”

“Wait, what?” There was so much Pyrrha had missed. “_ Cinder _ took orders from _ you? _”

“That’s right. I was her boss. I ordered the assault on Beacon. Like I said, I don’t have much practice being good. But I do want to make an effort now.”

“And it would be _ good _ to undo the Fall of Beacon,” Ruby weighed in. “I’m a little scared of changing the past because the slightest thing could have effects we can’t predict, but it’s not just Pyrrha’s life that could be saved. There’s Penny too. Everyone else who died in the Fall. Everyone around the world who died in Grimm attacks afterward. That has to outweigh whatever unintended consequences we cause.”

“I remember hearing about the Fall of Beacon,” Xuri added. “The Grimm were bad for months after that. There were several times when we got attacks in more than one town at the same time, and I couldn’t defend them all. People I knew died. If there’s any way to stop that, you can count me in.”

“Besides,” Weiss said, “didn’t you say there was a Fall of Vale that would have been today? If you’re going to take credit for that not happening, surely you can do the same thing again. Do good where we can all see and remember this time. Do that and I _ might _ start to believe you’re really with us now.”

Salem sighed and rested her head back against the wall. “You all are just determined to make the past unrecognizable, is that it?” She rolled her eyes. “Alright, fine. Going back to before I got the Relic of Choice is going to make things weird, just so you know, but Sophia is guaranteed to arrange _ something _ to make me have retrieved her sooner.” Salem pursed her lips and shrugged. “And I suppose if that happened, I wouldn’t really need to destroy the place, now would I?”

She stepped away from the wall and returned to the isolated seat she had sat in before. “But like I said, there were a lot of moving parts. It would be easy enough to reset the present day to back then – I’m still not sure exactly why or how that works, but I’ve done it twice before – but that’s no guarantee we could stop every part of the Fall of Beacon. We’ll all need a solid plan before we jump.”

“The destruction kicked off with Pyrrha’s tournament match against Penny,” Ruby said. “This time Pyrrha can be prepared. If we don’t let Cinder broadcast negativity to the world, she won’t have the Grimm on her side. That cuts out half the fighting right there.” She turned to address Pyrrha directly. “Penny Polendina was a robot. The world’s first. In all the ways that mattered she was human. She had an Aura. She was alive. But her body was made of metal.”

“So my Semblance…” Pyrrha put a hand to her mouth in horror. She had seen the aftermath of what she had done and vaguely recalled noticing the lack of blood on the arena floor, but in the shock of the moment and the whirlwind of activity that followed, that entire fight had been mostly blocked from her mind. “I… I’m sorry. I never would have…”

Pyrrha looked up as the sound of a latch clicking came from the house’s front door, which swung open to let unfamiliar young boy step in. Whoever this was, at a glance he seemed self-assured and he carried himself with purpose, except with a slight hesitation as he first gazed upon the gathering. As he came closer Pyrrha could see he held a cane – could that be Professor Ozpin’s cane? It looked the same. Why would this boy have such a thing?

“I see you’re all still alive,” the boy spoke, in Ozpin’s voice. “As well as a few… extras.” With a grim expression so out of place on his youthful face, he glared first toward Xuri then Eve in the back of the room, settling finally on Pyrrha. 

Eve’s voice cut through the stillness as all others were too unsure to speak up first. “The legendary Ozma. We meet at last.” Her magic reached invisibly across the room and yanked Ozpin’s hand up, shaking it in a pantomime of the usual greeting as she introduced herself. “Eve Silver, Winter Maiden.”

Xuri took that as a cue and followed suit, standing to shake Ozpin’s hand physically. “Xuri Ahavh, Summer Maiden.” She flashed a quick smile and slipped back to her seat. 

“Pyrrha Nikos. I’m not a Maiden.” The last of the newcomers stood as well, but the boy merely waved her back. 

“I know you very well, Miss Nikos,” Ozpin said. “You were one of the best students I ever had. I am sorry for what happened to you.” From his tone it seemed like a ‘but’ was coming, but if so it was never spoken aloud. 

“Professor… Ozpin…?”

“It’s him,” Jaune confirmed as he took Pyrrha’s hand, guiding her as she awkwardly returned to her seat. “He… reincarnates. Every time he dies. It’s a long story.”

“I see…” Pyrrha’s eyes flicked back and forth between this young Ozpin and the other members of her team. 

“So,” Ruby cut in, fixing Ozpin with an intense stare of her own, “have you thought about what I asked you earlier?”

“I have,” Ozpin responded calmly. “I thought about it a great deal while I was out, and seeing what I have come back to only solidifies my decision. I can’t help but notice Salem has both of the Maidens that were unaccounted for, as well as the Relic of Creation, and moreover that she has used the Relic to bring Miss Nikos back to life. What else has she offered you for your cooperation?”

“She’s not bribing us with anything. We listened to her side of the story and decided to give her a chance. Salem has changed. We are working together now for the good of Remnant, but we could still use your help.” Ruby shifted the Relic of Knowledge into one hand and offered the other to Ozpin, but the gesture was not returned. 

Ozpin made a noncommittal noise. “Qrow, what do you think of all this?”

“I think I need a drink,” his once loyal spy responded. “And it’s taking most of my willpower not to take one, but with the quarter brain I’ve got left over I say trust the kids. You and I haven’t been leading this bunch for a long while now.”

“Hmm.” Ozpin shifted his grip on his cane to bring it up almost to a combat stance, then flipped it over in the air to grasp it near the bottom, the trigger now on the far end from his hand. “Salem is moving quickly now, and she’s become exceedingly bold to come here in person, particularly to stay in the same room as a silver-eyed warrior. Which brings me to the conclusion I reached while I was out. It is time for me to stop holding back. I must be equally quick and bold.”

Ozpin’s free hand snapped up in a blur and a thin beam of green light sprang from his fingertips, striking Ruby in the chest and throwing her backward. The lamp flew from her hands and was pulled with magical force, sailing through the air to land in Ozpin’s grip, while Ruby herself found her progress slowed to a halt in midair as Eve’s magic wrapped around her, holding her stable to stop her crashing headfirst into the brick edge of the fireplace. 

A sweep of Ozpin’s cane raised a shimmering green wall not unlike the effects of hard-light Dust, stretching from the bottom of the stairs behind him all the way across to the window, passing directly between where Xuri and Salem sat. Everyone was out of their seat in an instant: Jaune rushed to Ruby’s side, ready to heal whatever injury she had suffered from the blast, while Salem and Pyrrha both focused on the barrier. 

Across the room, Jaune’s sword quivered in the rack of weapons, then rose to fly into Pyrrha’s hand. She slashed at the translucent wall and green sparks flew from every impact, but it suffered no apparent damage. Neither could Salem’s bolts of fuchsia light do anything more serious than give a slight discoloration to the wall. 

On the other side, Ozpin held up his cane over his head. The white sphere on the handle end of it began to glow with a piercing, unnatural radiance that commanded the attention of all who saw it. Ozpin brought it down in a long vertical sweep and the sphere left a trail in the air, an arc of white light tinged ever so slightly with gold. The line widened in the middle as Ozpin flipped his cane again, bringing the handle back into his grip so he could squeeze the trigger and collapse its length. He hung both the cane and the lamp on his belt and turned his focus now upon Xuri. 

The Summer Maiden shrank back into the corner where Ozpin’s magical barrier met the wall and thrust her chair out in front of her. She was the only person trapped on the same side of the barrier as this crazed fifteen year old, and she banged on the wall with her fists but pulled back as the magical sparks burned her hands. Her eyes lit up with a green glow as Ozpin advanced, ready to defend herself with magic even after Ozpin tossed the chair aside through the glowing wall. 

Xuri’s bursts of flame struck Ozpin in the face and chest and fizzled out harmlessly on his Aura. He reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, and though she twisted and pulled she could not break free of his iron grip. Ozpin yanked her back and turned to face the arc of light he had traced in the air. It was wider now in the center and bottom, almost a teardrop shape of glowing white, and as Ozpin’s finger brushed the shimmering surface it burst like a bubble to reveal a new space beyond. 

A vast desert stretched endlessly beneath a pure white sky. Both Salem and Yang took in a sharp breath at the familiar sight, and met each other’s gaze to silently confirm that both recognized the alternate realm that existed on the far side of each Relic vault’s door. But the view only lasted a brief moment as Ozpin dragged Xuri forcefully inside onto the otherworldly sand. He twisted and brought up his free hand behind him, and the rift in space closed like a zipper was passed over it, vanishing without any trace left behind in the Vale house. 

“What the _ fuck _ was that?” Qrow was the first to break the stunned silence over the group. 

“I… don’t know…” Salem tentatively answered him. “I mean, I know _ what _ he did, but I have no idea _ how. _ Yang, you saw it too, right?”

“Yep.” Yang stood from where she had knelt over Ruby, as her sister now seemed to be back in perfect shape. “It looked like the inside of the vault, where I got the Relic of Knowledge.”

“It’s the same in the Choice vault,” Salem said. 

“And for Creation,” Eve added. “Ozpin must know how to traverse that place without a door. He’ll be going to Vacuo.”

“For the Relic of Destruction.” Ruby gently rubbed at where the magic bolt had struck her, though the residual pain had mostly faded by now. “That’s the only reason to kidnap the Summer Maiden. And he took Knowledge too.”

“He won’t get much use out of it,” Salem said. “Remember, I never reset time after your last question.” 

“So what do we do now?” Jaune asked. “I don’t think Ozpin’s coming back after that.” Beside him, Pyrrha handed over the sword she had borrowed, content to listen in her confusion and try to pick up what connections she could from context. 

“I don’t know if we’d want him back after that,” Yang commented. “He attacked Ruby! I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve been ready to leave him for a long time.”

Ruby nodded. “We do things our own way, then. We made it without him all the way from Mistral to Atlas. We know what’s going on and we can make our own choices going forward.” She paused and looked to Salem. “And if we go back and undo the Fall of Beacon, that undoes all of this too, including what Ozpin just did. Right?”

“I would assume so. If it actually worked, that’s such a significant change that I don’t think this same moment could ever come about again. We’d be dealing with a new future as it comes, with all our current knowledge made irrelevant. I don’t like losing that advantage.”

“Isn’t that just how normal people live? Not knowing the future?” Jaune was puzzled at the witch’s complaint. “Besides, we’d still know everything about magic and the past, right? But we’d be in a better timeline from then on.”

“I suppose so,” Salem grumbled. “Fine. But we need a plan. We should assume we’ll all be split up after the jump, and coordination will be essential. You’ll need a powerful team to intercept Cinder, and remember, Ruby, you won’t be the Fall Maiden anymore. Someone needs to take out Emerald before she interferes in the tournament. There’s the White Fang to deal with too, and that crime boss Cinder hired. And the Atlas robots, because I don’t think there’s any way to prevent them being hacked.”

“Our best fighters are Pyrrha and Weiss. Will that be enough? Pyrrha, are you okay going after Cinder again?”

“Three was an even match against the previous Fall Maiden,” Salem said. “Take another, maybe two. I’ll do my best to call things off, but I don’t expect success there. More than likely you’re in for a fight.”

“I’ll help too,” Jaune said. “I’m a healer. We might need that, going up against her.”

“Mercury is _ mine, _” Yang declared. “And this time I’m not aiming for the legs.”

“No,” Blake said, putting a hand on Yang’s shoulder. “We handle the White Fang. We’ve done it before, but only because we were both there for each other.”

“The rest of us can move as needed,” Ren spoke up. “Being flexible is the most important thing. And it won’t be just us there, either. Some of us can track down other teams for help. As long as we all stay in communication, we should be fine.”

“Everyone ready then?” Salem glanced around the gathering and saw approving nods and thumbs-ups. “Alright then, let’s mess up the past worse than I’ve ever done so before. Sophia!”

The Relic of Choice lifted off her head, leaking green mist as it floated through the air to find an empty space. All except Salem were frozen in time, as Sophia persisted in her choice to include only the one who wore her, and no one else. She would never learn; she could not. This was her first use since her creation, after all, from the perspective of the singular timeline that was real. It always was. 

“Sophia, include Ozpin.” Salem made the odd choice to let her rival retain continuity across the jump as well. “I know he’s not here, and he can’t have any input here. That’s what I want. I want you to not mention him at all to the others here. Now, include everyone else in this house.”

“It is done.” The rest of the gathering broke from their stasis at once. “What choice do you wish to make differently?”

Salem turned away from the spirit to address the group. “There’s one thing we should take care of first, and that’s Xuri. I promised a version of her once that I would train her in magic. That may not be possible anymore, but I can at least get her proper training in Aura. She’ll be a licensed Huntress before the Fall of Beacon.” 

Looking back to the Relic, she declared, “Sophia, about six years ago, Xuri Ahavh received the Summer Maiden powers and her parents had her meet a Huntsman, who recommended that she enroll at Shade Academy. I would like her to choose to take that advice, rather than leaving Vacuo as she did.”

“I know the choice you mean. Everyone here agrees with this change?” No one voiced an objection, so Sophia continued. “Very well. It shall be done.” In an instant the spirit vanished as if she was never there – because she never had been. The crown rested back on Salem’s head, unused. 

“Sophia!” the witch called for the second time, and again all around her froze. Salem instructed the Relic spirit the same way as before, including Ozpin alongside her own team but asking Sophia not to make any mention of that fact. “Now,” she said, once everyone around her was returned to normal movement, “This is the big one. This is where we all jump back two years because the new present day can’t possibly come close enough to the old.”

Salem took in a deep breath and let it out in silence. “I’m still not too sure about this, but you say it’s for the good of the world… Sophia, after Cinder Fall’s plan to draw Grimm from Mountain Glenn into Vale went off a few days early and was stopped, make me choose to come to Beacon personally and implement a new plan to recover the Relic of Choice myself, without telling Cinder that I am doing so.” 

Sophia raised a ghostly eyebrow. “You’re right, that is a major shift. Are you sure?”

It was Ruby who spoke up for the group. “We are. We’re ready to save Beacon.”


	10. Cycle 14 part 1: With Renewed Vytality

It was dark now, and cold. Gone was the inviting light of the team’s house and the warmth of the small blaze in the fireplace, replaced with dim tunnels of stone lit only by ever-burning torches of greenish flame high on the walls. A long shadow stretched in front of Salem across the marble floor, merging into the same gray beyond as the light from the vault behind her faded in the distance. 

A girl was charging toward her and Salem sprung out of the way, watching as she stumbled to a stop. But it was not Yang this time, thankfully, not a complete recreation of that terrible scene when Salem had lost her love. 

“Sorry,” Pyrrha said as she came to a halt next to Salem. “I almost hit you there. Where are we?” She glanced around at the wide hall under its ceiling so high that no light reached to illuminate it. “Is this the vault under the school?”

“I think it is,” came Jaune’s voice from a little farther down. “I remember it from–” He cut off suddenly and sprinted forward toward the vault, passing Pyrrha and Salem by without a second glance. The two turned to follow his passage and saw behind them what had captured Jaune’s attention. 

A fourth person lay crumpled on the floor, just in front of the vault portal. Jaune dropped and skidded on his knees the last few feet to come to rest at her side, and he carefully rolled the young woman to her back and put two fingers to her neck. Her eyes were closed, but she had a pulse, albeit a weak one. Jaune knelt over her and held out both hands over her collarbone and her stomach, willing his Aura to rise and spread over her as well. 

A white glow surrounded him, drawing out a faint yellow-orange around the girl to match, and the two Auras intermingled as Jaune’s Semblance activated, drawing on his deep reservoirs of strength to enhance and speed up the natural healing that this woman’s own Aura should provide. 

Pyrrha jogged to his side and knelt beside him. “What are you doing…?”

“It’s my Semblance,” Jaune explained, and Pyrrha took in a sharp breath before a proud smile spread across her face. “I amplify other people’s Aura with my own. I can make their Semblances stronger, or let them endure more attacks… or I can heal them. I discovered it after Cinder nearly killed Weiss.”

“Her too?” Pyrrha placed a hand on Jaune’s shoulder and shuffled a few inches closer. “We won’t let her kill anyone else. We are going to take her down.” 

“Speaking of which,” Salem said as she walked up behind the pair, “Do you happen to know what our timeframe is for all this? When exactly have we jumped back to?”

Pyrrha removed her scroll from her pocket and slid it open to view the date and time. “We haven’t moved at all… it’s the same day I just had, before jumping forward. This is the day I died.”

“Oh dear.” Salem pulled out her own scroll. “We’re short on time then. How long until shit hits the fan?”

Pyrrha grimaced. “An hour? Hour and a half, at most? I don’t remember exactly when my fight with Penny started, but it was late afternoon. We were the last match scheduled for the day.”

“Damn. We’ve got to be quick. You know how to not kill Penny?” Salem opened the text function and sent a quick message to Eve, asking where she was and letting her know there was not much time to prepare. 

“Now that I know what she is, I can be ready. I’d rather lose the match than accidentally hurt someone.” 

“Good. I remember Cinder reporting the plan to match you two up. She hacked the randomizer, you know. Or rather, Doctor Watts hacked it and gave Cinder the key. She wanted you to kill Penny while on live broadcast to the world. Don’t let her spread panic again, or we’ve all gone back in time for nothing.”

A sound came from the young woman on the floor: just the weakest of pained groans, but still more sound than she had been capable of a minute before. Her eyes flickered and opened a crack, unevenly, the left staying almost shut beneath the splatter of scar tissue across that side of her face. She glanced down at Jaune and her lips twitched as if trying to form words. 

“Shhh… Just rest.” Jaune smiled down at the woman to reassure her. “You’re going to be alright. Just take it slow. Let the Aura do its thing.” 

She gave a slight smile in response and closed her eyes again. Her breathing was stronger now, and steadier. No longer was she at death’s door; her internal wounds had closed and though she remained weak, her condition had become stable. 

“Eve says she’s alone and wandering around some sort of fairgrounds,” Salem reported. “She has Creation on her – which is good, because it’s not here with me. She’s having a difficult time not using magic openly for everything.”

“I’ll call the others,” Pyrrha offered. 

“You won’t get through from down here. It’s taking forever just to get short texts out and back. Hurry up there, Jaune, we need to get above ground.”

“I’m doing as much as I can,” the boy responded. “Remember, I’m not actually giving her new Aura. I’m expending mine as a Semblance to make her own Aura stronger. Really, she’s healing herself. All I do is give a boost.”

“Well, it’s a self-reinforcing cycle, right?” Salem paced impatiently back and forth in front of the vault. “As her body gets healthier, her Aura regeneration should speed up too. Maybe we can carry her while you finish the job?”

The woman’s eyes opened again and she tilted her head slightly toward Jaune and the two others behind him. “I…” Her single word quickly became a weak cough, but when it was over her voice came out stronger. “I can… walk.” She slowly lifted one hand to wrap around Jaune’s wrist. 

“You sure about that? Let’s start with just sitting up.” Jaune let his Semblance lapse for a moment while he bent over to support the young woman’s shoulders and bring her upright. “Still feeling alright? What’s your name?”

“Amber,” she said, and gave a nod. “I feel exhausted, but… better than I was.” Jaune held her through another short coughing fit, and when she was done she extended a hand up toward Pyrrha. “Help me up.”

Jaune and Pyrrha lifted together to bring Amber to her feet, and she wrapped her arms over both their shoulders for support as the group began moving away from the vault door. “Sorry to rush you,” Pyrrha said, “but we’re trying to stop the people who did this to you, and we don’t have much time before they make their move.” 

“What happened? Where are we?”

“You remember being attacked by three people?” Salem asked, and Amber nodded her assent. “One of them, Cinder, would have had a white glove with a little Grimm bug. Their mission was to steal your Fall Maiden powers and they partly succeeded, but not entirely. You were saved by a Huntsman and brought here, to the vault beneath Beacon Academy. You’ve been hidden away in a stasis chamber for months to keep Cinder away from you.”

“Months?” Amber stumbled with shock, but caught herself. 

“It’s the middle of the Vytal Festival now,” Jaune told her. “Cinder wants to hijack the tournament broadcast to spread fear and bring down Beacon.”

“But… why?”

“For this,” Salem said, taking off the silver crown to show it to Amber. “You’re a Maiden so you know about magic, I’m sure. Do you know about Relics?” Amber shook her head. “There’s four of them, each one locked away where only a specific Maiden can reach it. This is the one for Fall. I must have carried you to the door hoping it would be enough with only half your power, and I guess it worked.”

“What do you mean, must have?”

Salem shrugged as she placed the crown back on her head. “The Relics give magic to whoever has them, but only at a cost. This one messes with your memories. In effect, I’ve given up knowledge of the past to get a glimpse of the future instead. That’s how I know we don’t have much time before Cinder attacks.”

“And part of her plan involves finding her way down here and killing you,” Pyrrha added. “We won’t let that happen.”

Salem halted suddenly and held up the group’s progression. “Jaune, let me swap places with you. You can heal her more as we walk. We’ve got a ways to go and that might get us above ground a little faster.” She stepped closer and slipped an arm around Amber’s waist, and Jaune ducked out the back under her arm so the Maiden could support herself on Salem’s shoulders instead. Jaune followed a step behind her with a hand up, hovering over the deep arrow wound in her back as he switched his healing Semblance on once again. 

“One more thing,” Amber said, looking down at herself as she walked straight ahead. “Do any of you have some spare clothes?” 

“Oh, right. That doesn’t really cover much, does it?” Salem retrieved her scroll again and slowly typed a message with her one free hand. “My associate Eve can get you some new clothes, and until then, I can make an illusion. It’ll take a lot of my concentration so I’ll wait until we’re at the elevator, if that’s okay.”

The message was sent off across the exceedingly weak signal deep below the surface, and it was two full minutes before a response came in. “Eve will meet us shortly, but she’s just run into Ren and Nora and wants to coordinate things with them first. I’m going to text Yang too. She’s the only one on that team whose number I know but she can give everyone else my contact.”

“Sounds good,” Jaune said from behind. “Lead the way. We can fill Amber in on the situation as we go.”

* * *

Far above, the Beacon fairgrounds bustled with activity. Nora was practically bursting with excitement, grinning and twirling her skirt as she took in the sights around her. It had been so long since she had been here among the rows of stalls with their food and games and souvenirs, and despite the end that had come to it all, she had only fond memories of time spent here with her team and her friends. 

“Isn’t this all so exciting?” she exclaimed to the two people beside her, both much more calm and reserved as they breathed in the cool fall air. “We really did it! We’re back in time!”

“Please don’t say that so loudly,” Eve admonished. “Everyone around us knows nothing. We have indeed gone back in time, but Salem has informed me that we have only an hour before the Fall of Beacon begins again.”

“Then we should move quickly,” Ren said. “We can find Team Coffee and tell them to be prepared. Coco and Yatsuhashi were eliminated from the tournament in the doubles round, so their whole team should be available. They fought well last time, and we can help them do even better.”

“Maybe they’re at that good noodle place! We went there as a team once, before one of our fights. Come on.” Nora trotted ahead a few steps and turned back expectantly to wave the others forward. 

“Nora… I know what you’re thinking. We can look, but we don’t have time for a bowl of noodles.” Ren turned to the third member of the group. “Eve, what do you think? Do you have ideas or plans?”

“Nothing specific. We should assume the worst, that we will have to fight all of Cinder’s team as well as the Grimm, and we will need assigned squads to make sure we don’t miss anyone. I would contact Cinder directly and ask about her plans, but I don’t believe we met until after the Fall of Beacon.”

“That can be Salem’s job then,” Ren said, as he and Eve followed Nora through the maze of temporary buildings and exhibits. Was it memory that drew her onward, a perfect recollection of the fairgrounds’ layout still known two years later? Was it some supernatural sense of smell that let Nora track down pasta like a bloodhound after its prey? Did she really know where she was going at all? If she was wandering blindly, Ren and Eve would have no way of knowing. 

“To be honest,” the boy continued, “I’m a little surprised at how willing you and Salem are to cooperate with us like this. I wanted to give you a chance because I believe that everyone deserves a second chance, but this is not at all what I thought it would entail.”

“It’s not what I thought either,” Eve admitted. “This Salem and I are not from the same timeline. I believe you and I are, but she went through many jumps before creating the timeline we knew. Those travels changed her, particularly the one immediately before she came to us. She was so distraught over Yang’s death that she stabbed herself, briefly flirted with the idea of ending the world via a negative judgement… and then pulled herself out of it and resolved to do better.”

“And I find that commendable. Many people faced with such a loss might fall headlong into revenge. I nearly did so myself once, and I needed Nora to pull me back from the edge.”

“You mean like Hazel. I do worry about him, and his quest to kill a man who won’t stay dead.”

“I suppose so.” Ren nearly tripped on the corner of a bench as he followed his partner around the side of a stall and through a narrow alleyway. “But apart from that he seems reasonable, unlike some others we’ve met from Salem’s team. What about you? If you served the old Salem, why stay with the new one without seeing any of the things she went through?”

“Salem created me,” Eve answered simply. “I’m not a robot like Penny,” she added hastily, realizing what those words might have implied. “But there was another me once, long ago. She died. She had a normal life and she was happy, but receiving the Winter Maiden powers broke her. That one fluke of random chance destroyed her career, ended her relationship, very nearly got this body killed… but Salem’s people found her. 

“Salem took what was left and built me from the pieces. I lost much of what made her a normal, functioning person, but I gained discipline and most importantly,  _ control. _ I am the master of my own self and everything that happens to me. I trained my powers into telekinesis so that I could control the world outside as effectively as my own body. I trained my brain to accept augmented vision so that I could see everything that happens around me. I like Salem because she tells me everything about the world that I cannot see. So that I can never be taken by surprise again.”

“Intriguing. You consider it a form of life debt, Salem helping you become who you are today?” Ren paused suddenly in the street and looked all around. “Wait… Where’s Nora? I was paying attention to you instead of her and now she’s gone.”

“I don’t know. She turned the corner here going this way, but disappeared somewhere before we got to this point. We should wait in place until she realizes she’s lost us.”

“Right. I’ll call her.” Ren opened his scroll, but no sooner had he pressed the button to call his partner and raised the device to his ear than Nora herself appeared around the side of a building a ways down the path. She skipped forward with something large and flat in her hands as Ren cancelled the call and put his scroll away. 

“Look what I got us! We have funnel cake!” Nora grinned and held out a tangle of fried dough to her two companions. Seeing the others’ hesitation, she continued, “Go on, take a piece! I mean, I suppose I  _ could _ eat it all myself, if you insist, but I got it for all of us.”

Ren tore off a large chunk of the dessert for himself, and Nora halved what was left and offered part to Eve. “I don’t believe I’ve ever had funnel cake before,” the Maiden said, lifting it first with her magic before remembering the public setting and switching to a physical hand. “I’ve heard of it, but carneval food was considered low-class in Atlas.”

“All the good things are,” Nora said around a mouthful of sugary bread. 

“It is good,” Eve said after she tried a small bite. “And clever, timing a rush of short-term energy from sugar and oil to coincide with the fighting ahead of us.”

Nora waved a greasy hand dismissively. “Whatever excuse you need. I just got it because it’s tasty.” Her portion disappeared before the others had even finished half of theirs, and she beckoned the pair forward again, still leading them toward the place she had decided Team Coffee ought to be. 

Ren and Eve followed at a fast walk, determined not to let her out of their sight again, and Eve picked up exactly where she had left off. “I don’t really consider my service to Salem to be payment of a debt,” she said. “A child owes nothing to their parents for being born. I do retain full memories of that other life, but she and I both consider me to be effectively a new person. The fact is, Salem and I have a mutually beneficial arrangement. She provides information and resources to let me maintain the level of control I need, and when she requires my power, I use it as she directs. 

“And I do prefer the new Salem to the old. She’s more unpredictable now, which is not good for me, but also this is still very new. I like the idea of doing good in the world, and preventing the gods’ return in a different way. The old me swore an oath once to do no harm. Now, I’ve violated that oath countless times without remorse, but I do try to cause a  _ minimum _ of harm. I never kill unless specifically instructed to do so, and even then I make it quick and painless.”

“I think I understand,” Ren said. “I can’t say I fully agree with everything, but it’s good to get a sense of your side of things. On this at least, I feel like we can work together well.”

Ahead of them, Nora stopped suddenly as her favorite noodle stand came into view across a small open seating area. The moment Ren caught up, she turned and hissed into his ear while pointing ahead. “Is that… Tyrian?”

“And Watts too,” Eve confirmed. 

“What are they doing here? They weren’t at the Fall of Beacon!”

“Well, they are now. Let’s go find out why.” Eve set off toward the two men’s table, only to be stopped by Nora grabbing her arm. “If they weren’t here last time, they won’t know who you are yet. You’ll be fine. Come on.” Nora’s grip loosened by magic, and she and Ren shared one last glance between them before following their new companion. 

Tyrian and Watts looked up from mostly empty bowls at their approach. A flicker of surprise crossed both their faces, then Tyrian looked down to shove another chunk of mostly raw fish into his mouth. Watts gently dabbed at his face with a napkin to remove any traces of stray pasta sauce, but Eve spoke first before he could get a chance. 

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

Watts raised one eyebrow at her. “Neither are you. What are you doing outside Atlas? Who are these  _ children _ with you?”

“New associates, with me on a special mission from Salem personally. Why are you not in Mistral? Have you found the Spring Maiden?”

Tyrian looked up with a mad grin, fish bits dribbling all down his chin. “Not yet, milady. But I’ll find her, sooner or later. And when I do…” His smile spread wider than it seemed his face might allow and he tapped his fingers together with barely contained glee. 

“I know who the Spring Maiden is, and I know where she lives,” Eve said flatly. 

“Ah! Where? Tell me and I will please our Queen!”

“No. Go home. Your Queen no longer has need for you.” On the table, Tyrian’s glass spontaneously tipped over to pour its ice water into his lap. The scorpion man yelped and leapt up, only to trip backwards over the bolted-down bench where he had sat. With his long tail wrapped around his middle and unavailable to help him balance, he fell over the seat to land on his back on the ground behind. 

“Was that really necessary?” Watts asked, stroking his mustache and offering no help at all to Tyrian. He picked up his own glass and drank deeply, and kept it firmly in hand even after he was finished. 

“It was. Now, why are you two here?”

“Her Grace left home without assigning me a mission. All of a sudden, she ordered Hazel to fly her to Vale, so when Tyrian came back with yet another report of stunning failure, he was unable to deliver it. I decided we ought to follow, and see what was going on here that required such  _ personal _ attention from our esteemed leader.”

Eve finally turned her head to stare directly at Watts with her human eyes. “If you were not called here, then you are not wanted here. Leave now.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. If all this truly goes as Cinder says it will, I’d like to watch. If not, I’d like to watch her fail. And either way, I’m sure Tyrian will get to have some fun…”

* * *

Professor Ozpin was at his desk. He was in his office. Most disturbingly of all, he was in his old body again. What in the  _ world _ had Salem just done? What choice could she possibly have changed, to do  _ this? _

The computer screen built into the surface of his desk told him the current date: one that Ozpin had thought – and hoped – that he would only ever have to experience once. This was the day he died, again. But this time things were different. Everyone who knew what Cinder was, also knew about Ozpin himself. He had no secrets left to take to his shallow, transient grave. If Cinder attacked him again, Ozpin would no longer hold back his strength. 

If  _ anyone _ attacked Ozpin today, he would not hold back. He could not afford another death, not now, not when Salem was making a move like this. He reached under his desk and felt around for the single large button installed on the bottom surface, and pressed it hard. The emergency button. It would automatically send a message to every member of Ozpin’s inner circle, instructing them to drop whatever they were doing and report to Ozpin’s office at once. 

Wait. Shit. That inner circle included Qrow, who had betrayed him. Ozpin debated picking up his scroll and sending an additional message just to his former spy, telling him to ignore the summons, but decided against it. There was a chance Qrow had not been brought along from the future, and would still be loyal. And if he had, he might not know Ozpin had made the jump, and could let some information slip. 

Ozpin picked up his cane from where it rested against the side of his desk and turned it over in his hands, familiarizing himself again with all of its many functions. This weapon he had built had served him well through countless lifetimes, and it would see another battle today. And the white dome that formed the cane’s top – the odd sphere he had found in the pocket of his first reincarnation, who that first host had not recognized – that subtle gift from the God of Light might also get to serve its purpose soon. 

Across the room, the elevator door slid open with a soft chime, and two women stepped out. Glynda, his second in command at Beacon, always the first to heed his calls no matter how much she might complain about them. And a less expected guest: Xuri, the Summer Maiden, now carrying a weapon she had not had just moments ago, when Ozpin had stolen her away from Salem’s side. 

She carried a mid-size silver sword with a channel cut out of its center, leaving two parallel blades with a narrow space between them like a tuning fork, held together only at the hilt and by a few narrow crosspieces between the two halves. The blade was long, but light enough to be wielded in a single hand if desired. All around the grip and handguard were spots of color, tiny Dust cartridges that, when pressed, would infuse the central channel with energy to be released in a ranged attack when the sword was swung. 

“Thank you for coming,” Ozpin greeted the pair, not waiting for Qrow or General Ironwood to arrive. “We have a very urgent situation on our hands and I need everyone I can trust.”

“What’s going on?” Xuri asked. “Has something new happened with Fall?” Evidently this new version of Summer was up to date on the immediate situation, though Ozpin wondered if she knew of what the Maidens guarded over. 

“Something terrible. Fall is a lost cause. She already has it.”

“What?!” Glynda began pacing back and forth across the middle of the office. “How can she have gotten to it already? Amber was stable when I checked on her this morning.”

Xuri glanced between the others with confusion. “Sorry, who’s gotten what now?” So she had not yet been told of the Relics, or even of Salem. That was a major shift from being on Salem’s own team. Had Ozpin’s adversary made a mistake with the Relic and retroactively lost control of a Maiden? 

“Each Maiden has access to a magical object called a Relic,” Ozpin said, explaining exactly as much as he needed to and no more. “They are stored at the Huntsman Academies, and Fall’s is kept here. Our enemy, Salem, has stolen it right out from under us. She is making a serious move today, this very evening. In just a few hours’ time, Beacon and Vale will be overrun with creatures of Grimm.”

“Where is this information coming from?” Glynda asked. “Has Qrow reported–”

“Qrow cannot be trusted,” Ozpin interrupted her. “My knowledge comes from experience. Salem has used the Relic. She is  _ here, _ in Vale, and I  _ will _ take the Relic back. I will take all four. It’s time they were brought together.”

Glynda halted her pacing mid-step. “You can’t be serious. Uniting the Relics now? You know what you’re inviting in. Are you sure this is good enough?”

Ozpin held out a hand and his cane leapt through the air to come to him. “We are in a time of peace,” he said. “For eighty years the world has been more united than ever before. But if we do nothing, that ends tonight. Taking back the crown can buy us a little time, but it has to be done  _ now. _ Right now we have a chance and I will argue my case in front of the judges if I need to, but if the last thing the world sees before the CCT goes down is Atlas robots attacking Vale citizens, then we won’t get another shot for decades.”

“Another shot at what?” Xuri clasped her sword’s hilt in both hands in front of her chest and swished her tail nervously. 

“At either saving the world or destroying it,” Glynda said. She glared at Ozpin. “You only get one try, you know! If it fails, we’re all dead. Are you  _ really sure _ now is the proper time?”

Ozpin slammed his cane down on the floor with a resounding thud. “It’s a chance I’m willing to take. We’re better off dead than under Salem’s rule. Now, we must act swiftly. Xuri, you and I are going to take a quick trip to Vacuo for the Summer Relic.”

Xuri frowned. “Right now?”

Ozpin stepped around the edge of his desk and faced an empty space to the side. He flipped his cane around the other way and the sphere embedded in its handle began to glow, and a vertical swing left a glowing rip in the air. Glynda and Xuri both backed away, but Ozpin stayed up next to it, willing the gap in reality wider. The moment it was large enough to step through, he thrust a hand into its center to burst the film of white nothingness and reveal the desert beyond, Ozpin’s favored hiding place in the null realm just outside of Remnant. 

“Take my hand, and don’t let go,” Ozpin instructed. “This is not a place you want to get lost in.” 

“What…  _ is _ that place?” Xuri’s eyes were wide with fear and she looked helplessly over to Glynda as she moved forward to take Ozpin’s hand. 

“To be precise, I don’t think it’s really a place at all,” Ozpin said, though this attempt at explanation did nothing to lessen Xuri’s apprehension. “It is everywhere and nowhere, midway between here and the afterlife, and it will be our shortcut across the world. This ball on the end of my cane is quite literally nothing. It is solidified emptiness. It is like the point of a godly needle, able to rip a gap through reality or stitch it up again.”

Ozpin stepped through the gap, and Xuri gave Glynda one last terrified glance before being pulled through as well. Glynda could offer nothing but a shrug, as she too had never seen her leader perform such a feat before. 

Behind her, the elevator dinged again, and opened to let Qrow step out into the office. He emerged just as the rift beside Ozpin’s desk was zipping itself closed from within, and came up to stand next to Glynda. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “Looks like I missed all the fun. Where’s he going?”

“Vacuo,” Glynda replied curtly. “He and Xuri have gone to retrieve the Relic of Destruction. He says he wants to bring the four together, right now.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“I know. I think he’s making a mistake too, but he’s convinced Salem is planning something big for today. He claims she’s stolen the crown out from under us, but I don’t see how. I’ll check on it just to be safe.”

“So Oz has gone to get the sword, and he plans to use it. That’s just great.” Qrow’s hand drifted to the flask on his belt, but he forced himself to not pick it up. 

“I believe he plans to have Xuri use it. You’ve seen her weapon. From what Oz has said about the Relic, that sword he built for her is like a Dust-powered replica of it. He’s been training her for this moment since her first day at Shade.”

“Hmm.” Qrow wandered over to lean against one of the pillars at the side of the room, and tried to think of what he should say. He had the beginning of a headache as this younger body he found himself in had not yet given up the constant heavy drinking, and it made it difficult to think. Could Oz have jumped timelines with the rest? That seemed impossible, but if he knew of the coming attack… Either way, Qrow was not confident the world was ready for a judgement, nor did he think Ozpin could feasibly call one before Cinder attacked. 

“D’you think we ought to tell him no?” Qrow finally asked. “I don’t know if he’d listen, you know how he can be, but I don’t want to see the world destroyed.” 

Glynda threw up her hands. “I don’t know. We’ve trusted him this far but I’m worried about this sudden recklessness. I don’t know where he’s gotten his information. He even said he doesn’t trust you anymore. I thought we had things under control and now I’m just…  _ really _ concerned.” She started pacing again, swishing her wand back and forth though without activating its power. 

Qrow shook his head solemnly. “I don’t know what to do either. What I’ve seen points to an attack today too, but bringing out another Relic can only make things worse. I don’t know what’s going on with Oz, or with Salem. Neither of them’s acting like they should. I’m just going to take this day as it comes and try to remember, the world and the people come first. Before Oz, before anything else we’ve been taught. That’s the one thing I’m still sure of. If it comes to a fight… then we fight.”

* * *

“I hope Qrow is okay meeting with Ozpin.” Blake sat on the side of her bed, in the old dorm room Team Ruby had once shared. 

Yang sat next to her and leaned gently into her shoulder. “I’m sure he’ll be fine. This Ozpin shouldn’t remember anything, and Qrow knows what not to say.”

“It’s not that I’m worried about,” Ruby said from across the room on the other bed. “Uncle Qrow went through so much trouble to quit drinking, but he’s younger now and his body will still be addicted.”

“That’s not something he can fix overnight.” Yang gave a wistful smile. “We’ll just have to hope for the best, and carry on with our missions. When it’s all over, we’ll be there for him. Does everyone have Salem’s number in your scrolls?”

The rest of the team confirmed they had the witch’s contact. “Actually,” Yang continued, “there’s something I should go see her about, before the fighting starts.”

“Want me to come with you?” Blake offered. 

“Nah, better not. You three stay and come up with a plan to stop Emerald. I’ll be as quick as I can, but don’t wait up for me if it’s getting late.”

“Be safe,” Weiss told her. “It’s still weirding me out a little that I can just… call Salem, on my scroll. It never really occurred to me that she’d have one.”

Yang shrugged. “Eh, she keeps up with the times, I guess. What’s weird is that she knew  _ my _ number, because a different me gave it to her in a timeline that never existed. She could have a magic contact like that for anyone.” Yang stood and moved to the door. “Anyway, I’ve got to run. See you guys in a little bit.”

* * *

Salem held up her scroll, open to the number keypad, and motioned for the others around her to be quiet while she tried to recall a sequence she had been shown. It had not been long, but so much had happened, and she needed to get this right. When the numbers came to her, she typed them in at once and placed a call, already beginning to absentmindedly pace around in the grass by the base of Beacon Tower. 

“Who is this?” a stern voice demanded from the other end. “You shouldn’t be able to call this number. Do you have any idea who I am?”

“Hi, yes, I’m looking for Sienna Khan. Is this the right number?”

There was a long pause. “It is… Who are you?”

“Someone who wants to see you maintain leadership of the White Fang,” Salem said. “I’m calling to warn you. Adam Taurus has built a splinter cell more loyal to him than to you, and he is leading those people to attack Beacon Academy tonight. He and his allies will destroy the school, cause fear and panic across the world, and set back your cause for years.”

“I fail to see the problem. Humanity  _ should _ fear the Faunus.”

“This is not the fear that brings respect, but the fear that brings hatred. Adam is not driven by justice, only spite. He is aligning himself more with the Grimm than with the Faunus. Besides… after Beacon falls, Adam plans to assassinate you and take over the entire White Fang.”

“How do you know any of this? Why should I believe you?” Sienna sounded highly skeptical, but not enough to hang up. 

There was nothing Salem could possibly tell her that would make sense. But at least among the many crazy reasons, there was one which was actually true. “Magic is real. I know the future. You and I have fought together in an alternate timeline, and that’s how I knew how to call you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know it sounds impossible, but meet me in Vale and I can prove it. But hurry. Adam is making his move within the hour, and if he’s not stopped, the future doesn’t look good for you. Come to Vale right now, and I and my people can help you.” 

There was another pause on the other end of the connection, and Salem glanced up at her surroundings. Eve was here now with the Relic of Creation, waiting patiently next to Jaune, Pyrrha, and Amber. Whatever business she had had with Ren and Nora must have been completed, and Salem looked forward to the report. Though she was tuning out the group’s words, Salem could see that they were taking care of Amber’s request for replacement clothing. 

Sienna Khan’s voice finally came through again. “I’m sorry, whoever you are, but this is ridiculous. I couldn’t get to Vale in an hour even if I wanted to. Adam may be hotheaded, but he has been loyal, and–”

“I am warning you of an existential threat,” Salem cut her off. “I know it sounds absurd and you don’t believe me. What do you say the chances are that I’m telling the truth? Not much, right? Five percent? One chance in twenty? Would you take a five percent chance of seeing Adam kill you and run your organization into the ground? Would you take a five percent chance of guaranteeing the Faunus don’t see equal rights this century? The consequences are bad enough that even a small risk is too much. Please, come to Vale at once.”

There was an audible sigh from the other end. “And how do you propose I get there from Mistral?” 

“Uhh…” Salem thought fast, running through every resource she had in the area, the possibility of using Relics, finally to Semblances before she found a workable idea. “Okay, do you know Raven Branwen? She leads a bandit tribe in your area. Raven’s Semblance can send you to her daughter Yang, who’s with me in Vale.” 

“I’ve heard of her.” A disgusted groan came through faintly, as if Sienna was holding her scroll away from her head. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and then the connection went dead. 

Salem slid her scroll shut and turned her attention to Eve. “Welcome back. I see you’ve met Amber, the current half Fall Maiden. What’s going on with Ren and Nora?” A flash of yellow caught her eye in the distance. “Is that Yang?” Salem called the girl’s name and waved her over to join the group. 

“Ren and Nora are in the fairgrounds,” Eve reported. “They have gone to look for a Team Coffee for reinforcements. However, it seems Cinder also has reinforcements. We ran into Tyrian and Watts there. I told them to leave Vale and they refused. However, they mentioned that Hazel was your pilot on the way here, in this timeline. He should still be around somewhere. Hazel disagreed with the Fall of Beacon after the fact, so he might help us stop it.”

“Thank you, Eve.” Salem acknowledged the report, and held out a hand to receive the Relic of Creation in addition to the crown she wore. “Now, Yang, what is it you wanted to see me about?”

“That, actually.” Yang pointed at the scepter. “I need something created.” 

“Oh? What is it?”

Yang stared down at the grass for a moment. “Look at me,” she finally said, but Salem didn’t see anything wrong. When she looked up again, she brought up her right arm to wave it in the witch’s face. “Look! We’ve gone back in time to before I lost my arm.”

“…Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not really! I adapted my fighting style after that. I block with the metal arm to save on Aura. I couldn’t have beat Adam without it, and now he’ll be alive again too. It made me  _ better _ , and I don’t think I can go back. I need my metal arm again.”

Jaune walked over away from where Amber and Pyrrha were talking quietly to one another. “Let me get this straight. You want to cut off your own arm? And use a Relic to make a new one?” 

“Yep. That’s the idea.”

“That’s a crazy idea. But… I do see your point about the fighting. Just one thing… make the new one first, okay? Just to be sure. I’ve been healing Amber since we got here but she’s about as good as she can get now, and I can heal you too.”

Salem held out the scepter to Yang. “Here. There’s no code word or name for this one. Just focus on what you want, in detail, and will it to become real. Want it more than anything. You know the internal workings of that arm better than I do.”

“Um. Okay.” Yang accepted the Relic and pointed it off into empty air. She thought about the prosthetic arm she had worn for so long, from the moment it had come delivered to her house, the weeks before she even tried it on, the training she went through to use it. She thought about how that arm had let her move freely and reach the Relic of Knowledge. How it had let her survive Adam’s attacks and disarm him. How she had used it in almost every fight to gain a crucial bit of added durability.

There was a slight pop of displaced air as a yellow and black right arm appeared out of nothingness and dropped to the grass. Yang picked it up and examined it from all angles: the fingers and elbow joints bent as they should, the gun embedded in the forearm was present, the attachment to her shoulder looked like it would be secure. “This looks good,” she said, dropping her right gauntlet off and rolling up her sleeve. 

Yang pointed the Relic again and concentrated, and moments later a long red sword without a crossguard appeared in the air. Yang handed it to Salem and held out her right arm, handing off the scepter to Jaune as she held her new right hand in her left. 

“This is Adam’s sword, isn’t it?” Salem looked down at the blade with apprehension. 

“Got to make it as similar as possible. The fire Dust infusion probably kept me from bleeding out last time.” Yang’s Aura glowed slightly then faded out again as she disabled its protection. “I’m ready.”

Salem raised the sword, holding it in both hands as she stepped back slightly to line up a single vertical slice. She lowered it slowly to make sure she would hit exactly where Yang was pointing, then lifted it again to a ready stance. Salem closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but her hands were trembling and would not be calmed. She tightened her grip and tried to steel herself, but still could not push past the mental block. 

“I don’t think I can do this,” she said finally, lowering Adam’s sword to her side. “Not like this. Not to you.”

Yang lowered her outstretched arm. “Sorry. I thought if anyone was going to–”

“I’ll do it,” Eve’s voice came from the side. The red sword pulled out of Salem’s grasp and floated over to hover near the Winter Maiden, and Salem stepped back to stand with Pyrrha and Amber. Eve walked around behind Yang and placed one hand over her eyes, while Jaune stood ready at Yang’s right side. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Yang felt around to make sure her sleeve was still out of the way, as Eve was blocking her vision. “Go ahead. Do it.”

Without hesitation, the red blade floated up, aligned itself, and made a quick downward chop. Eve yanked her right arm into her chest and opened her mouth in a silent scream of pain, and she worked to control her body’s reaction as Jaune jumped forward to bring his hands up over the stump of Yang’s severed arm. 

“Go on, I’m ready, really,” Yang said. “Don’t make me go find the actual Adam for this.” She stood unmoving, Eve’s hand still over her eyes, feeling the telekinetic pull of the metal arm out of her grasp but oblivious to the fact it was already being installed. 

Finally Eve stepped back and removed her hand from over Yang’s face. The effect of her Semblance broke, and Yang wheezed as the sensation returned to her body. There was a dull ache in her right arm as if it was bruised, painful enough to be mildly distracting but not nearly so much as to incapacitate her. She looked over to where Jaune had his hands up, the scepter she had given him now returned to Salem, and she startled at the sight of her metal arm already in place. 

“What? How did you… I didn’t feel a thing!”

“It’s my Semblance,” Eve said, walking around to Yang’s front so she wouldn’t have to turn her injury away from Jaune’s healing hands. “I can touch someone and take away their pain. What you’re feeling now is only the damage from the wound itself, with none of the shock or adrenaline reactions you would have had normally, and Jaune is helping with that. You didn’t notice the injury when it happened, so your brain isn’t fabricating excess pain to assign to it. You should be back to perfect fighting shape very quickly.”

“But you noticed, didn’t you, Eve?” Jaune locked eyes with the Maiden while he continued to heal Yang. “You don’t just numb pain, you feel it yourself.” 

“That’s correct. I felt the initial shock, but as I have no actual wounds, that reaction can be easily controlled. It was the logical course of action.”

“Logical or not,” Salem said, “you didn’t have to do that. You could have saved yourself the pain. Why use your Semblance?”

“I  _ just _ said why. But in addition… because you like Yang and being nice to her would make you happy? Because doing it increases my social standing with this group and by extension, increases yours? Because as I told Ren and Nora just now, as you yourself reminded me not long ago, I was a doctor once? Plenty of reasons. Pick the one you like.”

“It doesn’t matter why,” Yang said. “Just… Thank you, Eve. For all your help.” 

From the ground by Yang’s right side, her severed arm floated gently up to hang in the air. “Would you like this back?” Eve asked. 

Yang jumped back with a look of horror on her face. “No thanks! All I need is the gauntlet.” She forced a laugh. “I know that’s my own arm, but  _ man _ does it ever look disturbing all by itself. But the metal one alone isn’t like that. That’s weird.”

“Well, no need to scare anyone else.” Eve brought up her own hand to rest one palm against the severed arm. Intense blue light flashed outward in a narrow cone from the arm and the same hue overtook its surface, deepening until the entire limb crumbled into motes of blue floating gently up to fade into the sky. 

Jaune looked on in amazement. “That’s… Ruby told me about that. It’s what Cinder did, after Pyrrha died. Except then it was orange. What did you do?”

“I can’t fully explain it myself,” Eve said, “but it’s some kind of interaction between Aura and magic. Anything that has Aura, once dead, can be released into Aura… but for whatever reason, it takes on the color of the Maiden rather than that of the deceased.”

Behind her, Salem only shrugged. “I don’t know any more than she does.”

Just then, an announcement blared from loudspeakers set above the wide doors to Beacon Tower, and all the students recognized the voice instantly as belonging to Professor Oobleck. “Pyrrha Nikos, please report to Amity Colosseum at once! The next singles round match begins in  _ five minutes _ . If you are chosen by the randomizer to compete in this match and you are not present, you will be disqualified. Again, Pyrrha Nikos, please join your fellow contestants  _ immediately! _ ”

Pyrrha startled at the sound. “Sorry, I should get going,” she announced to the group. “This shouldn’t be my match – there was one other between Yang’s and mine, no one we knew competing – but it will be soon. I need to catch the next shuttle up there.”

“I’ll come with you,” Jaune said, moving to stand by Pyrrha’s side, until a realization struck him. “Unless anyone still needs healing? Amber, Yang, are you both in good shape?”

“I’m fine,” Yang said, holding up her robotic arm as if to flex its muscles. 

“And so am I,” the Fall Maiden echoed. “I feel a… a void, almost… where part of my power is missing, but my body is whole again. Thank you so much for saving me. I’ll go with you too, if you like. I always enjoyed seeing the Vytal Festival matches on TV when I was young.”

“You too, Yang?” Jaune held out a hand, but Yang shook her head. 

“Go without me. I’ll catch up in a bit. There’s something I want to ask Salem before things get crazy around here.”

“Alright. Let’s go.” Jaune set off at a brisk walk toward the large courtyard where Vale city airships waited to take people up to the Colosseum, and Pyrrha and Amber followed. 

“I believe I’ll head out too,” Eve announced. “I’ll try to dissuade Cinder if I can find her, or at least make another attempt at keeping Tyrian and Watts out of this mess. I would suggest calling Hazel when you get a chance.”

“I will.” Salem gave a quick nod to Eve as she left, then looked to Yang. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

Yang paced for a moment with an almost pained expression on her face as she tried to work up the courage to actually say what she wanted to say, still a difficult task even after she had managed to stay behind and found herself alone with the witch. Finally she halted, determined, and spun on her heel to look Salem in the eyes. 

“I want you to tell me about the other Yangs,” she said. “All the different versions of me that I don’t remember, who you’ve credited with making you start to think differently. But especially the one who was important to you. I want to hear about her. I want to understand what happened.”

“Oh… that’s a lot. Are you sure?” Yang nodded, and Salem walked over to sit against the side of the building, and patted the ground beside her to indicate Yang should do the same. “Alright then. Just know, you may not agree with some of these Yangs.”

“I know. They’ve had different lives, and became different people. Just tell me.”

Salem let out a long breath through her teeth. “In my original timeline,” she began, “the one I lived through before starting to use Choice… everyone died. Everyone on my side, except Hazel. Everyone on your side, except you – even Ozpin died again. You came to fight me with the Relic of Destruction.” Salem shrugged. “It didn’t work, of course. Nothing ever does, and I’ve tried it all. We fought to a draw.”

“Damn, I must have been good.” Yang grinned at the thought of her alternate self being a powerful fighter.

“You were the Spring Maiden then. Your mother died saving your life in the Fall of Vale, and she gave you her power. To break the stalemate I offered you a deal – give me the Relics, and I’d bring back your friends. You refused, I brought back Ruby to show I meant it… and that was the mistake that led me to all of this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ruby and Blake had both been dead for over a year. I hadn’t thought about them in so long, I forgot which one had the silver eyes. Now, even that can’t kill me, but it can cause damage that nothing else can. That was my first use of the Relic of Choice, undoing things to avoid the light.

“At that point I still thought of you as an enemy. But I didn’t want to fight you for the twelve hours straight it would take to wear you down, so I made multiple edits trying to make you less powerful, and I just couldn’t. First you were the Spring Maiden, then Fall, then Summer. There was always one of them whose final thoughts were about you. You always came for me, and you always did  _ something _ to put me on the defensive. I gained some real respect for all Yangs in those cycles.”

“That makes sense.” Yang nodded. “They all sound like... what I’d try to be, anyway. All this was in the future?”

“Quite a while after your time. I didn’t realize going backward was possible until I did it, and by that point I had other things to worry about and I never really got around to yelling at Sophia like I wanted to. That was where I met the different you. The one who liked me.”

“That’s the one where Blake died in Atlas and I defected?” 

“That’s right. We met way out on the plains of Darkness and I had to do a group teleport back to my castle. Normally I’d expect a brief moment of holding hands, but she went for the bear hug. I had no clue what was going on.”

“And just like the others, she had you on the defensive right from the start.”

Salem laughed at the description, but it was a reasonably accurate one. “I suppose so,” she said. “That Yang was…” Salem pursed her lips, trying to think of something that would do her justice, and finally just let her breath out. “Driven, possibly even more so than the ones who came to defeat me. Passionate about Faunus rights, and willing to burn down much of Vale to send a message to humankind. You had dyed your hair black and gotten the native Salem of that timeline to graft cat ears onto you.”

Yang shuddered. “Wow. I could definitely see getting really into the civil rights movement, but that’s pretty hardcore.”

“I wish that had been my native timeline. I wish I’d gotten to live through all of it, rather than just switching in for the very end. Instead of switching in and by that very act, bringing about the end.” Salem stopped, and rested her face in her hands. “That Yang… she was the first to show me real kindness. To seek me out not for work but just to be with me. She had built a whole relationship with the previous Salem, and I ruined it for her, replaced the person she knew. And… she loved me just as much, without question.”

Yang reached up to gently lay a hand on Salem’s shoulder, and the witch’s head jerked up. Yang smiled at her and did her best to be reassuring. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “I may not be that person, but I’d never say no to another friend. Anyone who does her best to stop the Fall of Beacon deserves kindness, at least.” Salem leaned into Yang’s side and closed her eyes, and Yang moved her hand to the witch’s other shoulder to give her a comforting side squeeze. 

A moment passed in silence, but as Salem showed no signs of moving from her position, Yang finally spoke up once again. “If you don’t mind saying… what happened with that other Yang? You came directly from her timeline into mine, didn’t you? What went wrong?”

Salem let out an uneven breath, almost a sob, though no tears yet came. “Do you really want to hear it? Ruby thought you’d be happier not knowing.”

“I know she died, somehow. I’d like to know what happened, but only if you feel up to telling.”

“You had your Aura down,” Salem mumbled. “There wasn’t supposed to be a fight.” She leaned forward to rest her face in her hands once again, lower now with her elbows against her legs. “We jumped together at the vault. Turning back time to save Vale. But we weren’t alone when we landed.”

Yang gently ran her hand across Salem’s back and opened her mouth to speak, but Salem continued unprompted before she could say a word. “Your whole team was there. And that shouldn’t be bad, we’d met Ruby and Weiss before. They helped us set up the jump. But…”

“Blake was there too,” Yang murmured, and Salem let out another ragged sob. 

“She shouldn’t have been there. We didn’t go that far back. Sophia did something I didn’t intend. And Blake… she wouldn’t listen to you. She couldn’t understand that you and I both were different. Blake shot you.”

“What?” Yang stiffened and pulled away slightly. 

“You died in my arms. Ruby and I couldn’t save you. Weiss was just frozen in shock. Your last words… they were to Ruby, but I heard too. You said, ‘tell them both I love them.’ That was the problem. Blake demanded you choose, but you wanted us both and wouldn’t settle for less.”

“That’s… wow. I can’t believe it. She must have really… That’s not what I’d expect of any of us, especially Blake.”

“Don’t blame this one, she’s done nothing wrong. And neither did the other Blake, really. Why  _ should _ she have believed us? Our story was true, but that doesn’t make it any less absurd. She gave you warnings not to approach and you ignored them. There’s no blame to be placed and that makes it even worse. It’s just so unfair.”

“Yeah… I suppose it is. Finding someone you like only to lose them so soon…” Yang’s eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat as a realization came to her. “Oh. That’s not the first time that’s happened to you, is it.”

Salem shook her head. “Two out of two. I really am cursed.”

“It’s not your fault they died, either of them. Sometimes bad things just happen. You can do what I did when I lost Blake, and lay in bed depressed for six months… or you can do what Jaune did when he lost Pyrrha, and gather all the friends you can to your side and move forward with your head held high.” Yang placed her arm back around Salem, and the witch laid back into her half embrace as if it were the most comfortable position in the world. 

“I can tell you’re already on that second path,” Yang said. “You just might need a little help now and then to keep your footing. That’s what friends are for. And toward that goal… I’m willing to put in the effort if you are.”

“You know… Every Yang I meet is just remarkable, but each one in a different way. Always so driven toward your goal, so determined, so  _ solid _ that nothing can sway you from the path. But you’re not aiming for victory, like my first Yang. Not justice, like the one I lost. Now you’re something quieter, but perhaps stronger still… Is it harmony? To include justice, but also peace, and also… friendship. Is that Blake’s doing? Is this what you become when you don’t lose her?”

Yang rested her head back against the wall and gazed off at the horizon, where the sky was just beginning to turn dark. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I think that’s something you can only see from an outside perspective. If I’d seen a half dozen different Salems maybe I’d have more insight. Or if I could remember being all those other Yangs…”

Salem bolted upright as a realization hit her. “I think maybe you can,” she said. “I bet Jinn can help you with that. Once this is all over.” A smile crept across her face, the sadness of recalling her alternate pasts overwritten by the powerful distraction of an intellectual puzzle. “You’d have to phrase the question very carefully, of course, since she said technically none of it really exists, but I bet it can be done…”

Salem stood, and offered a hand to Yang to pull her to her feet as well. “How does that sound? We stop Cinder and the Fall of Beacon, then we make Jinn mad at us again as we both learn all about our alternate lives.”

“Alright,” Yang said with a laugh. “She’ll be in the vault still, but that’s not a problem. I’m sure we can get my mom to cooperate. Now, you call Hazel and tell him what’s going on, and let’s get up to the colosseum.”

* * *

“Why do these shuttles only run every fifteen minutes?” Weiss complained loudly as she and her team stepped off into Amity Colosseum. “We can’t be late for Pyrrha’s match! Come on!” She set off at a jog, Ruby and Blake following, weaving through the light foot traffic on the lower level, dozens of unwitting civilians stretching their legs before returning inside to see the next singles round fight. 

“They’re only just now calling everyone to the floor,” Blake said. “We’ll be inside by the time the fight begins.”

“We can do this.” Ruby used a brief burst of her Semblance to catch up to Weiss and run beside her. “I won’t be distracted by Mercury this time. We know who we’re looking for, and we know she’s probably in the front row. Once we’re in we can split up.”

“And Emerald can’t attack us because we’re in public. Weiss and I will take the left, Ruby, you go right.”

The trio dashed through the wide corridor connecting the outer rim of the colosseum to the seating areas, ignoring all the vendors to either side. Someone waved to them, but the person’s face never registered in the girls’ minds as they passed by, too intent on their goal. The stairs loomed before them and all bounded up two steps at a time, already splitting to run both ways around the inner edge of the arena. 

Below, Penny Polendina waved to her opponent. “Salutations, Pyrrha Nikos! It’s an honor to finally meet you.” Pyrrha raised her hands and looked down at them, disturbed by her own power within, distracted from the battle ahead of her by the weight of everything she had to prevent. Penny paused, then once again tried to engage her assigned partner. “This is going to be so much fun!”  
“Fighters, are you ready?” A booming voice came over the loudspeakers. “Three… two… one… begin!”

Penny swirled her collection of floating swords into a circle and sent them one by one toward Pyrrha, who charged forward to get into melee range. Pyrrha deflected a few of the dancing blades and contorted her body around others, performing controlled flips to avoid them entirely and let their momentum carry them far beyond her. 

The pair clashed, Pyrrha with only her spear as her shield lay across her back. She deflected spinning rounds of blades with the full length of the shaft, even thrusting forward with the blunt back end to push Penny back a step, but the next swirl found its way beneath her guard and struck against Pyrrha’s Aura. She was launched backward by the force of a half dozen strikes and flipped on her hands to keep her footing, pulling her spear back into her grip afterward with a quick tendril of magnetism. 

“My word, what a tremendous display by Miss Polendina!” Professor Port announced. Pyrrha gritted her teeth and leaped upward to push off a single stray blade that floated above her, plunging down to strike at Penny once again. She was blocked by a full ring of Penny’s blades, and the robot girl took the offensive once again, whirling fast loops all around herself as she ran forward. Pyrrha could only block and retreat, and once at a safe distance she paused, and pulled her shield out of its dormant position to cover her left arm. 

In the stands, Emerald narrowed her eyes and focused on the tiny, red and gold form of Pyrrha down on the arena floor. Just a minor illusion now, a feeling that Pyrrha’s weapons were bent and distorted, just enough to throw her off a little. She needed to be losing the match, but only just… she needed enough hope for victory that she would put her full effort behind her Semblance when the time came. 

And around the innermost ringed walkway, Ruby ran as fast as she could. If Mercury was here, he would be behind some maintenance door repairing his metal legs, and Ruby would not encounter him again. She glanced at each of the faces she passed but they were gone in a blur. Not many of the citizens watching from the front row had that distinctive shade of green hair, and of the few Ruby had passed so far, all had possessed skin too pale to be Emerald’s. 

Flashes of a different green caught Ruby’s eye, thin lasers fired from Penny’s blades, relentlessly one after the other as Pyrrha twirled and flipped between them. She batted away pairs of swords that came slashing at her between the bursts of light, but missed her next backflip over a laser and landed flat on her stomach. Penny pulled back her blades for a concentrated assault as Pyrrha scrambled to her feet, but quickly shifted to a defensive posture as the other girl charged forward with her shield down. Pyrrha jabbed forward with all her might, and sent Penny flying back across the stage. 

Her reprieve did not last long, as Penny activated rockets from somewhere within her robotic body and flew forward to slam into Pyrrha just as hard as she herself had been thrown. She led the impact with her feet, and through the pain Pyrrha recognized the feeling as metal. Just like in her sparring match with Mercury so long ago, when she had touched his boots and learned she could move them, the moment she came in contact with Penny she could sense with her Semblance that the entire human form before her was magnetic. 

What her friends had said was true. Pyrrha landed hard, uncontrolled, and tumbled backward to a stop, only at the end able to regain her feet. She needed to press her assault, get back into close range. At this distance Penny could still attack her, but Pyrrha could not risk throwing her shield under the power of her magnetism, not when the invisible lines of force linking her to the disk could pass over her opponent. 

Above, Ruby still ran. There had been no sign of Emerald yet, and she took a brief glance behind her to see that she had covered maybe a quarter of the arena’s circumference. That wasn’t enough. With Weiss and Blake taking the other side, that was still only half the places Emerald could be, and the fight had been going on for some time now. Ruby slowed her pace slightly to look more carefully at all the faces ahead, scanning farther afield than merely those she was passing by. 

Was that her, up ahead? The figure was too far off to identify exactly, around the curve of the arena still, but there was a spot of emerald green with brown beneath. That had to be her. Ruby placed her hands on the low wall separating the audience from the open space around the fighting platform and vaulted over it, activating her Semblance the instant she was clear. She flew as a cloud of rose petals in a red hood straight across the empty space, taking a shortcut through the ring’s interior to aim directly at her target. 

Emerald glanced up as the red streak broke away from the crowd, coming toward her. Pyrrha had been disarmed by precise strikes of a single narrow blade, and Penny had her arms up with her full complement of swords raised in the air behind her. This was as good a moment as she was going to get to interfere in the match, and whatever she was going to do, it had to be done now. Penny had her swords up in a loose cloud? Well, what if Pyrrha saw a larger swarm? An overwhelming array of blades that could not possibly be blocked with a single shield and spear…

Emerald concentrated, and willed the image in her mind to leap across the gap into Pyrrha’s own vision. Each blade splitting into two, then splitting again, and again, covering the sky in a blanket of piercing steel. Near her target she could see the real ten swords beginning their plunge downward toward the stunned Pyrrha, and Emerald focused on her illusion to maintain consistency with reality. 

Pyrrha stumbled back in shock at the sight and repressed the urge to release a wave of magnetic force to knock the blades away. They weren’t real, they couldn’t be… but they looked real. She crossed her arms over her chest instinctively, even knowing that she had Aura remaining and a hit anywhere was as damaging as any place else, and dropped to one knee on the hard floor. 

Ruby released her Semblance and returned to full human form, flying the last five feet to land just in front of Emerald – and luckily, it  _ was _ Emerald she had seen across the arena. Her momentum carried her forward across the walkway and she made little effort to slow down, instead winding up a fist to put that excess speed to good use. Emerald twisted out of the way as well as possible within the confines of her seat, but Ruby still struck her in the shoulder, shattering any last vestiges of concentration she had on the illusion. 

The swarm of countless blades winked out of Pyrrha’s vision, but she was already staring up at the announcers’ booth high above and shouting the two words she knew would save her from the barrage. “I forfeit!”

Ten real swords from amidst the vanished cloud stopped short, inches from Pyrrha’s body, and gently floated back to form a circle around Penny’s body. Pyrrha remained on her knees, now with a hand to her head as the adrenaline faded from her body and all the noise of the stadium came rushing in. 

“Well, this certainly is an unexpected end to the match,” Professor Oobleck announced over the loudspeakers. “Miss Nikos forfeits with twenty-four percent of her Aura remaining, almost tied with Miss Polendina’s twenty-eight percent. Perhaps one day we will have the honor of seeing a rematch, but right now I have to declare a victory for our young contestant from Atlas, Miss Penny Polendina!”

Penny bowed deeply, and her swords collected themselves into a neat stack and folded back into the compartment on her back. She walked across the arena floor to offer her opponent a hand and Pyrrha took it, still stunned and disoriented and with a growing headache as the interrupted illusion left its mark. 

“I’m afraid that was our last official match of the day,” Professor Port said. “There will be shuttles departing for Vale every ten minutes now if you wish to leave, or we have unranked sparring matches for you to watch, between those teams who have already been eliminated. The refreshment stands will remain open until eight o’clock. Thank you all, and all you watching from home as well, for helping make this fortieth Vytal Festival tournament a success.”


	11. Cycle 14 part 2: Autumn's Fall

“So… Emerald dropped the ball.” Cinder rolled her eyes at her three companions, all seated within a large tent just outside the Vale city limits. 

“I told you not to rely on some street urchin for a mission as important as this,” Watts said with a dismissive wave. “If you’d sent me the plans for this Penny as soon as you discovered them, I could have found a way to hack in. You could have disabled her from your scroll at any moment.”

“I had confidence in my plans, and I still do. Beacon  _ will _ fall tonight. We’ll just have to go to Plan B.”

“Watts is right,” came another voice, from the tall, red-haired man to Cinder’s side. “Illusions are nothing. It will take more than one girl’s fantasies to bring Vale to its knees.” 

“Oh, Adam, is there  _ any _ problem you won’t solve with a sword? Your time is coming. Just be patient a little longer.”

“The White Fang has been patient for a  _ year _ ,” Adam growled. “We will not sit by any longer while  _ humans _ fail over and over. I want Vale in flames. I want the Belladonna girl dead. If you can’t make that happen, I can take care of it myself.” He extended a hand across the gathering. “What say you, Tyrian? Care to join the crusade?”

Tyrian grinned at him. “Oh, yes, I’m in for whatever you have in mind. Where there’s slaughter there’s fun, after all!” 

Beside him, Watts sighed. “Just don’t go getting yourself caught. Remember, you have other orders. You wouldn’t want to disappoint Salem, would you?”

“Oh, no! I would never fail our Queen!” 

“I am concerned there’s something she’s not telling us,” Watts remarked. “I was approached by Eve,  _ twice _ , and she was very insistent that we both leave Vale at once. We know Her Grace is here somewhere, so why has she not contacted us? And why take Eve away from the post she’s held for years?”

“Does it matter?” Adam answered him. “We have an army, and we have a city full of sitting ducks. It’s time to take action.”

Tyrian ignored his fellow Faunus and sulked. “Why won’t Eve tell me where to find Spring? That’s not very nice of her. If it were anyone else, I’d simply  _ take _ the information… but not from her.”

“Who is this Eve?” Cinder asked. “One of Salem’s people I haven’t met? She must be strong if she scares even you.” 

“She’s like you,” Watts told her. “The Winter to your Fall. She lives and works in Atlas and almost never leaves, not even for our team briefings.” 

“Winter… then she is strong. But if she’s not with us, so be it. One Maiden will be more than enough to cause the fear we need.” Cinder looked to the White Fang leader and smiled. “Adam, it seems your time is now. Barricade the exits to Amity Colosseum and release your captured Grimm inside.”

“You plan to tap the broadcast and ensure it stays running?” Watts asked. That too was his virus that he had given for Cinder to use.

Cinder flashed a contented smile for him as well. “Of course. What’s one murder on camera to the world, when you could have hundreds? Thousands? They’ll be trampling each other in the halls.”

“It will be my pleasure.” Adam stood. “The world will not ignore the White Fang any longer! Humanity will hurt as they have hurt us.”

Cinder held up a hand as he turned to leave. “Wait. I have another...  _ bright _ idea. When you go down to Vale afterward, take your new friend with you.”

“You mean Jade?”

“I did say bright, didn’t I? I’m done with Emerald. Jade can make up for her failure. Just remember to wear protection when you’re with her.”

“What?” Adam was taken aback by Cinder’s words, but soon realized what she meant. “Oh. Right. I’ll change clothes into something safer.” With that, he turned and slipped out of the tent, heading for the rest of the White Fang encampment to lead them into battle before the Colosseum closed for the day. 

The others stood as well, but Watts had one last question before he and Tyrian set off to cause their share of mayhem. “Who is this Jade? I don’t believe I’ve heard her mentioned before.”

“Someone Adam met shortly after I recruited him. Have you heard of the insect clans of southeastern Anima?” 

“Another Faunus refuge?” Watts sneered and rolled his eyes. 

“Right across the sea from Menagerie. They’re unusual in that all their members are insects or arachnids, including all their children. Jade Goldwing is a firefly Faunus, and the current crown princess of the Clan of the Starfire Wheel. She and Adam have an impressive synergy when they fight together.”

“Hmph. I suppose Tyrian would fit right in.” Watts beckoned the scorpion Faunus as he moved to the exit. “Come. I’m going to commandeer an Atlesian Paladin. You can have all the ‘fun’ you want, but you’re not leaving my sight.”

“Do enjoy,” Cinder told them. “This is our moment of victory. It’s time for me to achieve my destiny and collect the other half of my power.”

* * *

A crowd of young Huntsmen and Huntresses gathered on the lower ringed balcony of Amity Colosseum. Weiss and Blake panted for breath after their long sprint around the inner edge, and nearby Pyrrha was resting against Jaune’s shoulder, tired after her fight and still more than a little dizzy from the whole experience. She had had this day, this evening, twice in a row now, and she wasn’t sure she’d even recovered from the first time yet before being thrust back into the nightmare again. But at least now, an innocent life had been saved. Pyrrha’s hands were clean. 

“Where’s Ruby?” Yang inquired after her sister. She stood with Salem and Eve still, across the gathering from her teammates. “Sorry I got here late, but it looks like everything went well?”

“Ruby’s being held by security after she assaulted Emerald,” Weiss explained. “I hope she gets out soon. I have a feeling this isn’t over.”

“It’s not,” Salem said grimly. “Tyrian and Watts are here, and they won’t leave. Cinder isn’t answering my calls. But we do have reinforcements. Hazel is here too, I’ve spoken to him, and he’s on our side. I also have one other person on her way, but I don’t know when she’ll get here.”

“Then we should take this moment to plan,” Ren said, stepping forward away from Nora’s side into the middle of the circle. “Pyrrha, Jaune, Weiss, are you still prepared to be the Cinder team?”

Weiss spun the Dust canisters in her sword. “I’m ready. We took her down in Atlas, and we can do it again.”

“I won’t let her hurt anyone else,” Jaune declared. “Pyrrha, are you sure you’re up for another fight?” Pyrrha nodded wearily and released her grip on Jaune’s shoulder to stand on her own. 

A new voice came suddenly from the direction of the stadium. “Hello, friends! What are you all doing?”

Half the group turned around, and stepped apart to let the newcomer join them. “Penny!” Weiss exclaimed. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“What do you mean? I feel great! But I’m curious. Pyrrha, why did you forfeit our match?”

Pyrrha looked down at her feet for a moment. “It’s my Semblance,” she said, finally meeting Penny’s gaze. “Polarity. I control metal. I didn’t want to accidentally hurt you.” 

“It’s okay, Penny. We all know, but no one else.”

“Oh.” Penny looked around at the circle of people in front of her. “Well, if you’re all friends of Ruby, that’s good enough for me! General Ironwood says I should pretend to be a human until the world is ready to see me, but I don’t know when that will be. Who are these new friends?”

Salem, Eve, and Amber all introduced themselves briefly, and shook Penny’s hand. “Now, Penny,” Salem said, “since you seem to still be in fighting shape, we could all use your help.” 

“Of course! What sort of help do you need?”

“There are people who are trying to attack Beacon and cause a panic. They set up your match with Pyrrha, hoping her Semblance would hurt or kill you in front of the crowds. We managed to warn Pyrrha about you in time, but our enemies are still out there. We need all the talented fighters we can get on our side tonight.”

“I’ll help however I can.” Penny saluted. “I’m combat-ready!” 

“You can help us with Cinder,” Jaune told her. “Pyrrha, now that you know, you can use your Semblance to help Penny and fight together. We should get to the vault below Beacon. That’s where Cinder went last time, and she won’t know that Amber is already gone.” 

“Where she came to kill me…” All eyes turned to Amber. “Are you sure you don’t want me there too? She got her power from me. I can match her.”

“No,” Jaune said. “Cinder will focus on you alone, and if you die before she does, she’ll get the other half of your power. Stay safe and let us take her down first.” The sound of shouting came in the distance and Jaune paused. It didn’t sound quite like the screams of adoring fans watching a fight – more shrill, more piercing, almost like the fans had been caught in a fight of their own. “What’s going on over there? Did you all hear–”

A Vale airship rose up over the side of the balcony and aligned its bay doors with the edge of the platform a short distance away. The hatch slid open and immediately a pair of beowulves bounded out, then another pair, and by the time the students had their weapons ready a total of eight had emerged, and the airship was turning away. 

One was instantly taken down by a precise shot from Pyrrha’s rifle, while Blake and Ren each sent volleys of their own into the pack. On the far side, two beowulves broke away from the group to follow the screams of fear farther away, but only one made it out of sight. The other found itself lifted into the air and flailed its limbs desperately, before Eve’s magic tossed it over the edge. Those Grimm who survived the initial attacks and got in melee range quickly met their ends at the hands of the other students. 

“The White Fang! They’re releasing the Grimm early!” Blake scanned her surroundings with her gun raised, but nothing more threatened this small section of the colosseum. 

Salem thrust the scepter of Creation into Eve’s hands. “Take this for now. I fight better with both hands free. Deal with Emerald and Mercury then check back with me later.” She plucked the crown off her head and bent down to slip it over her left ankle. “And thanks for the idea about carrying this safely. Help me make it secure.” A black bandanna appeared from nothing at the tip of the scepter, and a few deft moves of telekinesis raised the crown to a stable spot and fastened it in place. 

The witch held out both hands to the students before her. “Cinder team, join hands in a circle. I can take you all down to ground level. Everyone else… fight Grimm, I guess. Decide who’s going after whom once the stadium is clear.”

“Just to be clear,” Weiss said as she linked hands with Penny on one side and Jaune on the other, “You’re okay with us hunting down your entire team now?” 

Salem gave a pained half-smile. “I’d prefer if Tyrian lived, just because he’s so useful to me. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a loathsome person to be around, but he’ll do anything I tell him because he  _ literally _ worships me as a goddess. Watts, however… he’s fair game. I’ve had quite enough of his constant animosity toward…” She shrugged. “Everyone. So do whatever you like with him. And again, Hazel should be fighting with you, so be nice to him.”

“…Right. I’ll believe that when I see it.” Weiss took one last glance around her as Salem closed her eyes and tightened her grip on Penny and Pyrrha’s hands. A flash of red caught her eye and she turned to look, but before she could call out to her partner, Salem activated her teleportation magic and the entire ring of five vanished in a pale golden light. 

“Ruby!” Yang rushed over to hug her sister. “Where were you? What’s happening in there?”

Ruby pulled away and waved for everyone to follow her back inside. “There’s Grimm everywhere. They’ve told the audience to shelter in place while the Huntsmen guard the doors, but everyone’s scared already and if a single one gets through it will get so much worse. We should spread out and help stop Grimm as they come in.” 

“What about Emerald and Mercury? Where are they?” Eve inquired after her assigned targets. 

“I don’t know. Security let Emerald go after arresting me. She and Mercury probably got out before the White Fang showed up. They only let me out to fight Grimm. They said if I save some lives today they’ll forget about me trespassing in the arena and punching an audience member.” 

“I’ll look for them on the ground then. And maybe catch up with that beowulf I dropped.” Eve broke from the group and walked to the edge of the balcony, and without hesitation stepped off into empty space. 

“What the…” The group stared in amazement as she plummeted out of view. 

“It’s okay. Maidens can fly.” Amber’s eyes lit up with orange and she hovered a few inches off the ground. “Still, she must be  _ really _ confident that she can stop in time. I wouldn’t try that myself.”

“Wow… Alright, everyone, split up!” Ruby pointed off around both sides of the colosseum. “Meet back here when it quiets down and we’ll figure out a way down to Beacon.”

* * *

The elevator of Beacon Tower was cramped as it slid down into the earth. Four people all with weapons in hand stood, tense, waiting to come to a stop. Jaune and Pyrrha took up the front with their shields in case Cinder managed a surprise attack, while Penny and Weiss remained behind. 

“Pyrrha, how’s your Aura?” Jaune asked. 

Pyrrha kept her shield up but holstered her spear across her back so she could retrieve her scroll and look at its report of her vital functions. “Up to thirty-three percent. Two fights back to back like this isn’t good, but I’ll do my best.”

“Be careful. I don’t want anyone getting hurt. Penny, what about you?”

“Aura at forty percent, all other systems fully operational.”

“I’m ready too,” Weiss added. “The Weiss of this timeline didn’t know how to summon yet, but I do.” 

“Good. Our main advantage here is numbers. Flank her and don’t let up.” 

The elevator slowed, and shuddered to a stop. The doors slid open onto the wide, dim hall, and Jaune and Pyrrha raced forward together with their shields up to claim ground, but there was no Cinder waiting at the door. Weiss and Penny followed, and the group made their way cautiously out into the soaring cathedral deep beneath the school. 

Four sets of footsteps echoed in the stone hall as they came up on the crossing path. Straight ahead lay the machine where Amber had rested in suspended animation for months, where Pyrrha had once agreed to take the Maiden’s Aura onto her own body in a desperate bid to save Beacon. None of that was needed now. Amber was healed, and long gone from the vault. And the lone figure arriving from the device at the other side of the intersection did not look happy about this development. 

Cinder stopped a few steps into the open square and shouted across at the four people facing her. “Where is the Fall Maiden? What did you do with her?!”

Pyrrha stepped forward away from her team, gesturing for them to stay where they were for now. “She’s with me,” she lied. “Our Auras are one now. Her power is mine. And you will not have it!” She held her spear at arm’s length, pointing its tip toward Cinder as if challenging her. 

“Did you have to make such a target of yourself?” Jaune asked softly as he stepped up next to Pyrrha again. 

“Better me than Amber. We don’t want her running away from us to go after the real Fall Maiden.” 

Cinder’s eyes flared with an orange glow. “Oh, I  _ will _ have that power,” she said. “All you’ve done is put one more step in the line of succession.” She thrust her hands behind her and each lit up with a nearly white flame, propelling her forward like rockets. Her body took on a wreath of flame as she moved, and the instant she reached the center of the space she halted, releasing the fiery outline of herself to continue forward. 

The group split, Jaune and Pyrrha breaking right while Weiss and Penny went left. Cinder sent simultaneous blasts of fire from both hands at them, then swirled her Dust-infused clothing to call forth a pair of dark glass swords from the orange streaks left in the air. She charged toward Penny and Weiss, leaving her other two attackers alone where their close-range weapons could not hit her. 

Penny’s ten floating swords unfolded from the compartment on her back and formed a circle in front of her, just in time to deflect the single glass blade thrown at her. Cinder had another in hand before she had taken three more steps, and clashed with both together against the defensive arc of Penny’s weapons. Weiss slashed at her and Cinder spun, throwing Penny back with a blast of fire to bring her other hand and blade around.

Cinder’s sword shattered on contact with Weiss’s own and a spray of molten glass splashed against the girl’s front, sending her stumbling back to wipe it off before it burned her Aura further. Cinder continued her rotation and brought up a thin arc of flame from her empty hand, more as a warning than an attack, forcing Jaune and Pyrrha to slow their entrance and bring up shields to turn it away. Cinder’s one remaining sword lengthened from its grip and formed a double-ended bladed staff as she prepared to keep several opponents at bay. 

A large black glyph appeared on the floor beneath Cinder’s feet, first showing the usual Schnee symbol but quickly morphing into a clock face, its outline glowing faintly gold around the black. The hands ticked backwards and Cinder’s motion slowed, allowing Penny to make a series of quick jabs from one side while Jaune and Pyrrha both slashed at her from the other, most of their attacks slipping through while Cinder was unable to react. 

A burst of fire rippled out of Cinder’s body in all directions, washing over the group and breaking Weiss’s concentration. She returned to full speed at once and launched a vicious flurry of attacks from both ends of her staff at Jaune and Pyrrha, sending both tumbling back under the force. 

Slowly turning rings of energy surrounded her and Cinder rose into the air, floating back a little toward the center of the open space. Pyrrha threw her spear up at her, but Cinder knocked it away with a wave of her hand and Pyrrha chose to run to retrieve it rather than spend precious Aura channeling her Semblance. She zigzagged back and forth to avoid fireballs raining down from above, and rolled to grab her spear again without the slightest moment of stillness that could let her be hit. 

Weiss ran away from the corner where she had stood and faced the open space of the cross hallway. She twirled and thrust her rapier into the floor, and a large white glyph spread in front of her. Motes of white light floated above it, brighter near the floor, and moments later a huge white suit of armor clambered up through the glyph as if it were a portal, hefting a greatsword over its shoulder. 

Meanwhile Penny, as the only member of the team who could easily attack an airborne foe, chose to pull her swords back. She arranged them in a circle in front of her with the points aimed toward Cinder and began to spin them, faster and faster, the neon green emblems on each one’s hilt glowing bright. 

Cinder whirled around to face her, but made no attempt to move from her position even as the powerful laser charged. She raised her left hand toward Penny, aiming directly down her opponent’s own sights, and released a small but white-hot fireball through the center of Penny’s ring of swords. It struck Penny in the chest and exploded, launching her backward and stripping some of the finish off her metal body. Her swords were pulled out of formation by their gossamer threads and the green laser fizzled out, and a brief shimmer of the same green crossed Penny’s body as her Aura’s shielding broke. 

Jaune charged across the open marble floor, racing to get to her side where his shield or his Semblance could be of use. Above, Cinder hefted the heavy glass twinblade in her other hand and took a brief second to aim at Penny’s new position, then hurled the entire weapon down at the now vulnerable girl. 

Across the battlefield Pyrrha dropped her spear from where she had been lining up another throw, and she extended her Semblance to wrap around Penny’s entire body. The robot girl was in the middle of standing up after the hit she had endured and was in no position to avoid Cinder’s followup, but the lines of magnetic force, weak from distance as they were, yanked her up and to the side. 

It was not enough to bring her fully out of harm’s way, but the last-second lurch meant that Cinder’s wide obsidian blade pierced not through Penny’s core, but into the left side of her stomach and hip. Metal crunched and broken wires sparked and crackled as Penny dropped to the floor again. Jaune arrived at her side just in time for the broken shards of glass scattered about to glow orange once more and crumble into dust. 

“Penny! Speak to me. Stay with us.” Jaune extended his hands over Penny’s body and activated his Semblance, linking his Aura to hers to bolster the natural healing power contained within. 

“Jaune…” Penny’s voice was distorted slightly, the movement of her head jerky as she turned to look at him. 

“You’re going to be okay. I can heal you.”

“No… Aura doesn’t heal my body. I have to be repaired by my father.” Penny slowly reached up to push Jaune’s hands away. “I’m going into hibernation mode now. Bring me back when it’s all over.”

“Penny, no! We can’t lose you, not again!”

“It’s okay, Jaune…” Penny tried to smile up at him, but only the right half of her mouth cooperated. There was a faint metallic click and then Penny continued, “I’ve disconnected my swords. Tell Pyrrha she can use them. Go… finish this. Protect our friends.” Her eyes closed and her raised hand dropped back to rest on the floor. 

Jaune dragged Penny’s dormant form to the wall where she might be out of the way of the conflict, then ran to Pyrrha’s side. “She’s not dead,” he announced breathlessly, “but I can’t heal metal. She turned herself off to save power. She said you should use her swords. I’ll power your Semblance.” He placed a hand on Pyrrha’s shoulder and a faint glow surrounded them both as Pyrrha slung both spear and shield across her back. They advanced together on their foe, Pyrrha pulling the ten blades to her side and getting settled with the sensation while Cinder was busy pummeling Weiss’s summoned knight from above with wave after wave of magic. 

Taking cover behind it, Weiss spun the Dust canister in the base of her sword to activate her rarely used yellow cartridge, and waited for the moment to strike. She could feel the knight weakening, and when it could sustain only one more strike Weiss stepped out of her refuge. She pointed her sword and released a thin bolt of lightning from its tip, striking Cinder squarely in the chest while she was distracted with the larger target. 

Cinder dropped out of the air and was met with a volley of flying blades. Pyrrha sent them one at a time to strike at her from all sides, each one oscillating back and forth in a line across Cinder’s body. The Maiden ducked, and released another dome of burning energy to knock the dancing swords away before following up with a pair of fireballs. 

Weiss rotated her Dust cylinder back to the default pale blue and swished her sword upward to bring up a thin wall of ice, which absorbed the impact but shattered with a single blow. On Cinder’s other side, Jaune thrust himself in front of Pyrrha, keeping contact so his Semblance would stay active but using his full body as a shield. The fireball crashed against his back and both stumbled, but his deep reserves of Aura held strong where Pyrrha’s own was nearly depleted. 

A new set of swords appeared in Cinder’s hands, condensing out of orange dust, and she flew toward Jaune and Pyrrha with small flames of exhaust spraying from her feet. She left a trail of fire in her wake as she surged forward and slashed against the pair of shields that met her, and continued on past them to escape the hail of swords that pursued her. Cinder dropped her hands to the floor and rolled, quickly bringing her feet around the other way to make another rocket-propelled pass at the pair. 

A glowing white beowulf bounded out of a summoning glyph at her, and Cinder dropped her plan to turn around again in favor of continuing her momentum. She stabbed both swords directly into the false Grimm and it vanished in a cloud of sparkling white, only to be replaced by an identical copy moments later. She raised a hand toward it and a small fireball leapt forth to blast it apart, but stumbled as a new assault from Pyrrha’s levitating swords struck at her back. 

The dancing blades were relentless and it was all Cinder could do just to turn them all away. Motes of orange swirled around her and a protective layer of black glass formed across her chest, with separate pieces guarding her forearms. Even still a few hits broke through her guard as the swords, now unbound from their tethers, were free to weave around each other unpredictably. And every time Cinder destroyed a Grimm leaping toward her, another rose to take its place as Weiss summoned a steady stream of the same form over and over. 

Cinder released another radial burst to buy herself a few seconds to breathe, and launched a blast not at the latest summon but past it, striking Weiss in the middle of her pirouette as she was preparing the current Grimm’s replacement. She threw one of her swords toward Pyrrha, but it was deflected harmlessly by Jaune’s shield. 

A spray of purple bolts spread from a third hallway: from the direction of the elevator while Weiss stood at the mouth of one side passage with Jaune and Pyrrha opposite her. Glynda Goodwitch swished her long wand back and forth, each pass releasing a quartet of seeking projectiles that traced out arcs in the air, marking her position to all now after they had failed to notice her approach. 

At the sight of their professor coming to their aid, Jaune lifted his hand from Pyrrha’s shoulder and broke off his Semblance. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Hang back a little. I think we can finish this.” Pyrrha nodded silently and gritted her teeth as she now bore the full weight of ten blades on her dwindling Aura, no longer offloading the cost of her magnetism to her partner. She pulled six of them back, taking two in her hands and resting the others at her feet, while Jaune sprinted in a wide arc behind Cinder to the other side of the square. 

He skidded to a stop next to Weiss and whispered a few words into her ear. The pair retreated a short ways down the side passage, trusting that Cinder was sufficiently distracted by the appearance of a new assailant that they would not be disturbed. Jaune laid a hand on Weiss’s shoulder and activated his Semblance again, amplifying her power as she concentrated on a new form. 

An enormous white glyph filled the floor, taking up more than half the width of the cavernous hall. Weiss knelt with her rapier pressed into the ground in front of her at the edge of the circle, her eyes closed as she blocked out the world around and focused solely on the fallen foe she wished to call forth. Points of white light swirled like flakes of snow, ever brighter and denser, finally coalescing into the solid form of a pure white sphinx. 

Back in the center of the space, Cinder’s entire body glowed. A large circle not unlike one of Weiss’s glyphs formed in the air in front of her, heating up from orange to yellow to white, and then a three foot wide beam of magical light sprung forward toward the Beacon assistant Headmistress. Glynda threw up a thin purple barrier to deflect it in all directions around her, but within seconds the Maiden’s power overwhelmed her defense. The beam pierced through and struck Glynda directly, hurling her thirty feet back as it burned off a significant portion of her Aura. 

A roar from the sphinx drew Cinder’s attention away from the professor and a flicker of fear crossed her face. As Glynda picked herself up off the floor and returned to the fight, Cinder batted away the floating blades that still assailed her, their movement more lethargic now as Pyrrha’s Semblance weakened. She brought up another wide circle aiming toward the beast and rose into the air, intending to strike at its body in the center, between the wings. 

A purple glyph appeared around Cinder’s ankles, Weiss’s Semblance infused with the full canister of gravity Dust from her sword, and she was pulled violently down to the floor again. The sphinx lunged forward and swatted her with an enormous paw, tossing her a short ways back up into the air. Just as she reached the peak of her flight, the beast’s snake tail struck forward to slam into her again, burning itself a little on Cinder’s wreath of flame but throwing her back to crash on the floor near where Pyrrha stood. 

Pyrrha let the four blades she still controlled fall, and raced to meet Cinder with the ones she held physically in each hand. Cinder rose halfway, then dropped and lay flat on her back to let a purple bolt from Glynda pass over her, before rising again. She released another burst of flame in all directions to knock Pyrrha back, and though the attack was light, it was enough to break the last remaining traces of Aura that protected her. 

But no one else was nearby to take over in her place, and retreat had never been an option. Cinder was looking slow and her own Aura was flickering, so Pyrrha charged again, aiming to finish off the illegitimate Maiden and avenge her own death at Cinder’s hands. She slowed as a fireball spit from the sphinx’s throat streaked across the open hall, giving it space as it knocked Cinder down again and triggered a fading yellow-orange glow from all around her body. 

Even with Aura down, Cinder still had access to her magic. She stood in a swirl of orange and a single jagged obsidian blade condensed in her hands, just as Pyrrha reached her. Pyrrha swiped downward with one of Penny’s swords, striking the black glass slightly off course, as she thrust the other directly forward. Each pierced the other’s flesh as Pyrrha’s momentum carried them together, and two gasps of shock and pain mingled together in the stillness as both fell to their knees. 

“My… destiny…” Cinder brought up one hand as if to clench it around Pyrrha’s neck, but her strength failed her. She blinked and the orange glow faded from around her eyes, and they gradually unfocused and stared into the space behind Pyrrha. 

The magical blade crumbled into orange dust, leaving behind a gruesome wound through Pyrrha’s stomach and lower back. “Destiny can be… rewritten,” she managed to hiss, before collapsing forward on top of Cinder and driving her borrowed blade deeper into the Maiden’s chest. A diffuse glow surrounded Cinder’s body for just a moment, then the light seemed to pull away from her entirely, zipping upward to disappear into the high vaulted ceiling. 

Glynda arrived first at the scene, but Weiss and Jaune were not far behind as they ran through the white sparkles of the disappearing sphinx. Glynda carefully knelt and put two fingers to Pyrrha’s neck, but Jaune merely threw out a hand to link his Aura to his partner’s. A shimmer of white rose around him, with only the faintest hint of red to match it, and Jaune kept one hand steady as he rolled Pyrrha off of Cinder to lay her on her back on the floor. 

“She’s still alive,” he said, but both Glynda and Weiss merely gave him a sorrowful look. “I mean it! My Semblance wouldn’t be working if she was dead.” 

“Mister Arc, you mean to say that between your last class with me and today, you’ve unlocked your Semblance… and it’s healing?” Professor Goodwitch was puzzled, but proud of her student. 

“It’s been a while since I had a class with anyone,” Jaune muttered. “Sorry, long story. You wouldn’t remember any of that.”

“Remember what? What were you children all doing down here?”

Jaune began to answer but stopped suddenly as a faint hint of a voice came from Pyrrha, and he leaned over to hold his ear close. “The… pod…” she whispered, and let out the rest of her breath. 

“Pod? What pod? What do you mean?”

“Amber… Her stasis pod… Put me…”

“Of course!” Jaune raised his head again and shifted his weight as if to stand, but remained with his hands over Pyrrha’s wound. “We need to carry her to Amber’s life support machine. That will keep Pyrrha stable while we rejoin the fight, then I can come back and heal her when Beacon is safe!”

Glynda stood and readied her wand. “I can carry her, but… what about Amber?”

“She’s fine,” Weiss said. “Jaune healed her earlier and she’s up above now. And with Cinder dead, Amber should have just gotten the rest of her powers back.”

“Pyrrha told you all about the Maidens?” A purple glow surrounded Pyrrha’s body and she slowly rose into the air, with Jaune standing with her to keep his Aura-bearing hands close. 

“Oh, we’re way past that.” Weiss led the way forward. “We’ve seen three of the four Relics used. We’ve met Salem in person. I stabbed her myself and she didn’t even care. Salem jumped our teams back in time with the Relic of Choice, so we could stop the Fall of Beacon. That’s what’s going on right now, and we need to get back up there and help.”

“That’s right,” Jaune said. “We’re from about two years in the future. Salem came to us and… she basically surrendered. She said she was giving up on dividing humanity and wanted to make things right now, and so far her actions have backed that up. She’s not lying… unlike Oz, who can’t tell the truth to save his life.”

“Not that he really needs to save his own life. He’ll just come back again. Besides, Ozpin attacked Ruby! He hit her with his magic and stole the Relic of Knowledge. Then he kidnapped the Summer Maiden through some kind of hole in reality.” 

Glynda thought back to her meeting not long ago, when the Ozpin she knew had done exactly the same thing. Kidnapped might be too strong a word, but Xuri had not gone entirely willingly, and Glynda would have had the same hesitation herself if she had been asked to come along. But everything else these students said… could all of it really be true as well? And if it was, what was she to make of it? 

“This is a lot to take in,” she said. “But Ozpin was acting… erratic… earlier. He was convinced an attack would come tonight, and it has. He left with Xuri to retrieve the Relic of Destruction and I fear one of them will wield it.” Ahead of her Weiss opened the stasis chamber’s door, and Glynda carefully placed Pyrrha within. “He even said he wanted to bring the four Relics together,  _ today. _ But he can’t be that reckless, right?”

Jaune pulled his hands away from Pyrrha to let Weiss shut the lid. “I’m not sure about Oz anymore,” he said. “I don’t know how he would know about our timeline… unless he was outside the world at the moment we jumped? But then Xuri would remember too…” Jaune shook his head. “I don’t know. All I wanted was to stop Cinder from killing Pyrrha today, and we have. She won’t chase us around the world for a year and a half now, so Salem turning good suddenly or not, this timeline is already better than the one we left.”

Glynda’s purple glow winked out and she lowered her wand to her side. “I don’t know what you two remember, and I don’t know what’s going on with either Ozpin or Salem today. Whatever’s happening between the two of them, whichever side you’re on… whatever the sides even  _ are _ at this point… I don’t have the time and energy to figure that out right now. Just leave me out of it, okay? Clearly I didn’t need to come down here to check on Amber and the Relic, if you kids have already removed them both. I’m sure there are plenty of Grimm up above, and I intend to keep myself  _ very _ busy and far away from any magic.” 

* * *

It was oddly calm in this part of the Beacon campus. The howls of Grimm could be heard in the distance, along with an occasional crash of breaking glass or falling brick, but on the main street in front of the tower at least, the evening was undisturbed by fighting. Salem sat on the edge of the pedestal beneath the large Huntsman statue, catching her breath after the stress of a large group teleportation. 

Even the simplest teleport was tiring, compared to most magic. To overcome the bounds of space itself… that was a fundamental building block of the world itself, far deeper than any concerns of Creation or Choice. But it was also unique in that it could be bypassed by anyone with magic, at least in small ways, unlike time or the basic nature of souls and minds. 

Salem had strained her limits taking the circle of five down the half mile or so from Amity Colosseum, and so she rested, contemplating the chaos around and her part in it all, both past and future. The immediate catalyst for the Fall had been averted only for the White Fang to bring a substitute. Things were going to get ugly no matter what as the panic spread, but maybe it could still come out better than before. 

And then there was the matter of Ozpin. He knew what was going on, and in the immediate fight for Beacon he could be counted on to help save lives, even as he plotted to seize the Relics back from Salem’s control. But in the long term even this plotting was better. His hand was forced, and in his desperation he would make mistakes. Already he had alienated his team by his actions just before the jump. Who did he have left? Goodwitch? Ironwood? The vague recognition of a public who barely knew him?

That was nothing. Salem had at least one Maiden on her side, likely more, alongside a large and well informed team. But even with all of that and more, would it ever be enough to stop Ozpin permanently? Was there a way to neutralize him and his influence so that none would ever even  _ try _ to unite the Relics?

He wouldn’t go down without a fight, that was certain. That was what scared Salem most. She had magic and that alone set her far above the typical Huntsman crowd, but by First Age standards she was thoroughly average. Ozma had been legendary for his skill even in that time. The Maidens had likely inherited something in between, leaving Salem reasonably confident that in terms of innate power, she was the single weakest magic-user on Remnant. And she had millennia of training to make up for it… but so did her rival. 

Unless – maybe he wasn’t as strong as he once was. Magic could be gifted to others, diminishing one’s maximum capacity to enhance someone else’s, as Ozpin had done for the Branwens alongside countless others over the years. Salem had never done the same. Each had their pawns, but while Oz was busy upgrading his to knights and bishops, Salem was happy to fall back and let old age defeat them more surely than any battle. Hadn’t one of those Yangs mentioned he was running low? But even still, killing him would only send him away and give him time to plan a new offensive. 

Salem stood, and walked aimlessly down the main corridor of the campus. She could think while she walked, and if she encountered Grimm she could do her part and eliminate them. There was still nothing near her on the ground, but up above a mid-sized nevermore soared closer. Salem slowed to watch it, judging if she could reach the creature with a magical attack, waiting to see if it would change course. 

A small burst of lightning shot up from the ground somewhere nearby, striking the nevermore on the underside of one wing. It banked sharply and gained a little altitude, preparing to throw giant feathers down like javelins upon its attacker, then suddenly the wing that had been struck before was shorn off entirely. The beast fell, flapping with its remaining wing in a descending circle until another invisible wave sliced through its main body, poofing the Grimm into black smoke. 

Salem pulled up the bottom of her dress and ran toward where the attacks had come from. Down a side passage, off between the row of trees that lined it… there, in the field a ways from the school’s entrance. A lone figure stood out in the open, facing off against a quickly dwindling pack of beowulves with a sword in each hand. A lone figure with a thick black tail, more visible in the fading light than any emblem or colors. 

“Xuri!” Salem called out, as the last of the Grimm fell. The young Huntress turned, and lowered her weapons as she jogged across the field. Halfway across, she blinked out entirely and Salem glanced around to see where she had gone, but a second later she returned to the same position and continued on her way. As she approached Salem saw that one of her swords was silver and the other gold, with a very familiar ornate hilt. 

“Hello!” Xuri put away her silver sword but kept the other in hand, as it had no sheath to carry it. “I’m sorry, do we know each other?”

“Not really, but I know of you. I have magic too, I know that’s the Relic of Destruction you’re holding there, and we both want to stop this attack on Beacon. I don’t really know why you’re here but I’m glad you are. I’m assuming Oz fetched you somehow, along with the sword?”

Xuri vanished again, then reappeared as if nothing had even happened. “Yes, I’ve worked closely with Headmaster Ozpin since my days at Shade. Do you know him?”

Salem laughed. “You could say that. I did marry him, after all.” Seeing Xuri’s shock, she continued. “I know I’m not involved with the school, but he really hasn’t mentioned me at all? Just as well, I suppose. We’ve been estranged for some time now. Anyway, there are two other Maidens here if you want to meet them. We could really use your help, especially with that sword.”

Xuri clasped her hands in front of her chest and gave a nervous grin, once again disappearing for a brief moment then returning. “I’d love to, but I can’t. Professor Ozpin asked me to guard the campus until he got back, and I need to keep patrolling for more Grimm.” She turned and pointed off into the distance, but Salem couldn’t look where she was indicating. A hint of green caught her eye on the back of the Maiden’s clothing, just for a moment, before Xuri turned to face her again and it was gone. 

“Wait. Turn around again for me? I thought I saw…” Xuri narrowed her eyes but turned as Salem instructed, and a deep sigh sounded from behind her. “Oz, you sneaky bastard…”

“What is it?” Xuri asked, still facing away across the field. 

“Were you aware that you have a seal of binding on your back?” 

Xuri vanished, and when she reappeared this time she was facing Salem again. “A what?”

“It’s a magical glyph that compels you to follow orders from the person who put it in place – in this case, since it’s green and shaped like a gear, that would be Ozpin. It seems he doesn’t fully trust you, at least not enough to leave you unattended with a Relic.”

Xuri frowned, but after a short moment her eyes widened in realization. “Is that why he told me not to take my vest off? I wasn’t going to anyway, but it was weird that he said it. Does it really force me to do  _ anything _ he says?”

“I’m afraid so.” Salem held up her hands and a pale pink glow surrounded them. “I’ve seen these before. I can remove it for you, if you’d like.” 

“Please.” Xuri turned around and pulled her hair forward to uncover the top half of the seal. “Sorry I keep disappearing,” she said, and blinked away and back one more time. “It’s for my Semblance. I’m trying to keep a certain spot in my location queue by going back there every fifteen seconds.”

Salem placed her hands over the glowing gear emblem, gently probing at it with her magic to find a weak point. Every spell like this was unique, tailored to both the caster and the target, but at least one of those signatures she was already familiar with. But it had been so long since she had seen a magical lock that wasn’t her own, and she was quite out of practice. If only she had looked deeper into the seal her alternate self had placed on Pyrrha, to refresh her knowledge…

A loud bang went off with a flash of green light from the seal, and Salem was thrown backward to land prone on the grass. Xuri blinked away a few seconds early purely on reflex, then returned with a hand over her mouth and ran to help Salem up. But not only was the witch unhurt by the experience, she was laughing. “Cursebreaking, always a fun line of work!” She threw up her hands. “I’m the only one around who could possibly undo his seal, and he knows a trap like that won’t hurt me. What is even the  _ point? _ ” She paused to grin some more, and shook her head. “Let me try that again…”

“If you’re sure you’re okay.” Xuri presented the seal again and reset the timer on her Semblance, and Salem returned to testing its edges with her own magic. What had she been doing when the trap went off? That had to be on the right track. She pushed a little harder and felt the magic start to crack beneath her fingertips, while constantly shaping her own power and the visualizations she used to help her like a virtual key morphing to fit an unknown lock. 

The green gear sparkled and faded out. “Ah, there we go. You’re free!” Salem stepped back as Xuri turned back to face her again. “Test it out. Try and go against something he told you recently.” 

“Um… he told me not to give the sword to anybody?” Xuri held out the Relic of Destruction, and Salem took it from her hand without resistance. The Maiden blinked out again, for a brief moment standing a considerable distance away from the Relic she had been ordered to protect. 

Salem turned the golden blade over and examined it. She had never been much of a physical fighter, but even she could tell its balance was good and the weapon was light for its size. “Do you know what this does?” she asked. 

“Same as my normal sword, but without Dust. You swing it and a wave comes out the end to attack things far away.”

Salem nodded. “That’s one use, yes. You can also just point it at something and delete it. It’s like the Relic of Creation in reverse.” She turned and held out the golden sword to aim its tip at one of the trees lining the nearby path. A brief moment of concentration, just like the scepter, and the tree vanished without a trace. “Like that. Technically you don’t even need line of sight to destroy something, but you do need pretty intense focus on your target.”

“Wow…” Xuri beamed with admiration, and readily accepted the blade when Salem handed it back to her. 

“Keep this. You can wield it a lot better than me. But be careful. The wave will be stopped by Aura, but the blade itself goes straight through. Try not to drop it on your foot.”

“I’ll be careful. And thank you.” Xuri stopped as a thought occurred to her. “Sorry, what did you say your name was again?”

The witch held out a hand. “Salem.”

Xuri’s hand froze halfway to meeting Salem’s own and she vanished, reappearing a pace behind where she had just stood. “Salem? Like, the enemy Salem? That’s you?” She glanced down at the golden sword in her hands, then back up, the worry on her face slowly giving way to confusion. “You don’t seem like Salem.”

“I know.” Salem shrugged. “Whatever he’s told you about me, it may have been true at one point, but right now I want to stop this attack just as much as you do. I’ve got friends here who I don’t want to see hurt.”

“Oh. Well… okay then. That’s… good to know…”

“It’s okay. It’s not your fault you’ve only heard one heavily redacted side of the story.” Salem pulled her scroll out of her pocket. “Take my contact down in case you want to find me later. I need to catch up with my team.”


	12. Cycle 14 part 3: Light of the World

“Emerald! Mercury!” Eve’s voice rang out through the street, deserted except for herself and two figures in the distance. Her scroll, floating in the air beside her, slid shut under its own power and drifted toward her pocket. Its rudimentary tracking ability based on the strength of signal connection to her targets was no longer needed now that the pair was in sight ahead of her. 

Emerald turned, her weapons off the back of her belt in an instant and ready in her hands. “Who are you?” she called back. 

Eve continued to walk calmly forward with her hands by her sides, the Relic of Creation aimed casually downward. “I work for Salem just as you do. I have new orders for you.”

“I work for _ Cinder _, no one else.” Emerald kept her guns pointed squarely at Eve, and beside her, Mercury shifted his weight to take up a fighting stance. “I’ve never seen you before and I’ve never met this Salem you and Cinder talk about. We have our instructions already.”

Eve still didn’t slow her approach, even as a warning shot from Emerald struck her Aura over her left shoulder. “Please don’t do that,” she said. “All your current orders are rescinded. You are to stop everything relating to the Fall of Beacon.”

“Not going to happen,” Mercury snarled at her as Eve finally halted ten feet from the pair. “You want us to stop, you’re going to have to make us.”

“I expected as much. But I thought I’d give you the chance first.” Still Eve kept her hands at her sides, and she stared forward silently as if daring someone else to make the first move. 

The image of Mercury shimmered and split, and a second copy of the boy stood in an identical posture next to him. Emerald vanished from Eve’s vision, reappearing behind her with her guns unfolded into blades, striking toward her back. 

“Illusions won’t fool me,” Eve stated. She shut her eyes and reached up with her free hand to lift the black glass circlet from her head, exposing a small plug on each temple where the prosthetic linked into implanted electronics in her skull. Now blind, she sensed around with her telekinesis, rebuilding the layout of the street in her mind without any of the nonphysical images being projected to her. 

Mercury ran forward and pivoted up to launch a booted kick at her face, but his foot flew off course over her shoulder. A light shove into his upper back as he was pulling his foot back toppled him forward to land on his hands and knees. Emerald fared no better, as her guns wrenched themselves away from her target at first, then when she got them under control again both triggers seemed to be locked in place, immovable by any squeeze of her finger. 

Emerald swapped her weapons to their bladed form and threw one on its chain toward Eve’s ankles. It stopped short in the air, and before Emerald could pull it back, the fastener on the chain’s end clicked open and disconnected itself from the weapon. The olive green blade floated gently to rest between Eve’s feet as its owner could only stare, dumbfounded. 

“How are you doing this?” Emerald cried. “Is that Polarity?”

“Similar,” Eve conceded, “but better. I am not limited to metal.” She telekinetically shoved Mercury back again, then interfered with his aim as he tried to shoot air blasts from his heels. Through it all she stood unmoving, scepter down in one hand and circlet in the other, as her opponents failed to touch her with a single attack. 

An invisible force tugged on Emerald’s ankle and she tripped, dropping face first onto the pavement. Her one remaining gun clattered from her hand and she grabbed for it again, but it slid away from her reach. Mercury found his own feet locked in place, one on the ground and one up in the air, and he waved his arms frantically to keep his balance until a shove knocked him on his back. 

Eve solidified her grip on the ankles of both her targets, and slowly lifted them to hang upside down in front of her. “Your orders are to cease your involvement in this attack on Vale,” she told the pair again. “This is Salem’s wish for you, and so it shall be done.” There was a series of metallic clicks from the region of Mercury’s waist, and suddenly the boy’s top half dropped to the ground while his two prosthetic legs remained suspended in the air without him. 

“What _ are _ you?” Mercury struggled to right himself, only succeeding in tangling his empty pants legs around each other. 

“I’m like Cinder, but stronger.” Eve finally opened her eyes and looked down to stare Emerald and Mercury in the face. “Imagine if Cinder had all of her power, not only part. Imagine if she’d trained with that power for a decade. Imagine if she channeled it into something other than fire and glass. I am the Winter Maiden.” A blue flare of magic rose from the corners of her eyes, no longer suppressed as Eve usually did. 

She finally brought the scepter up into a ready position, as her circlet lifted out of her hand to slide back into place around her head. Two pairs of handcuffs appeared out of thin air, floating down to latch one side around Emerald and Mercury’s wrists. Eve carried them both over to a nearby lamppost and forced their arms around it behind their backs, then locked the other side of the handcuffs in place. 

Mercury’s legs were placed gently on the ground about six feet away, just out of reach even if their owner stretched to his limits. Eve thought for a moment, then conjured a sheet of paper and a marker. “To Vale Police: These people are partly responsible for the recent attack,” she wrote. Her scroll buzzed in her pocket and the marker paused while she looked at the message that had just come in. 

“Oh, would you look at that,” she said aloud. “It seems Cinder is dead.” 

“You’re lying!” Emerald immediately accused. “She can’t be dead!”

Eve’s scroll floated down to hang in front of Emerald, showing her a picture of Cinder slumped on the floor of the Beacon vault, one of Penny’s swords lodged in her chest. “Being around Cinder wasn’t healthy for you, Emerald. She never would have loved you back. You can do better.” 

Eve focused back on the paper she held and wrote below her other words, “Their leader Cinder Fall is already dead. These two are little threat without her but should still be taken into custody.” She conjured a few pieces of tape and stuck her sign to the lamppost above Emerald and Mercury’s heads, and pulled her scroll back into her hands. 

Emerald was sobbing quietly with her knees pulled up into her chin, and though Eve had no further business here, the sight gave her pause. She reached out with her magic to probe the inside of Emerald’s neck, and carefully held the major artery there halfway closed: not enough to kill the girl, but still reducing the blood flow enough to gently put her to sleep. Emotional pain was not the kind Eve could take away, but at least she could push it off for a little while. 

And with her assignment completed with a minimum of harm, Eve turned and walked away. 

* * *

In front of Beacon Tower, parts of two teams reunited. Jaune and Weiss rested on the short stairs in front of the door, Glynda standing off to the side, all watching as another three hurried up to meet them. Ruby, Ren, and Nora pulled their friends into a hug the moment they arrived, as above them their transport shuttle down from Amity Colosseum turned to leave. 

“You did it!” Ruby exclaimed. “And you’re okay! I knew my BFF would come through.” She planted a quick kiss on Weiss’s cheek, then pulled back to glance around. “Where are Penny and Pyrrha? Are they behind you?”

“They’re… not coming.” Jaune dropped back to sit on the steps and rested his face in his hands. “They went in with too little Aura. But we couldn’t have done it without them.”

Nora and Ren sat down on either side of him and leaned against his shoulders. “Again…” Nora murmured softly. “We came back to save Pyrrha, and…”

“And we did. She’s not dead. Just very close.” Jaune raised his head, but could only stare off into the distance. “Pyrrha sacrificed herself to take down Cinder at the end. Just like she did before, but this time it was enough. We put her in Amber’s stasis pod to keep her alive. Penny is the same way. She’s injured and dormant, but as long as the rest of us make it through the night, we can bring them both back.”

“Then we keep fighting, for their sake.” Ruby spoke with her head held high, a determination in her voice that made Glynda do a double take at the sound. Was this really the excitable young girl who Ozpin had let into Beacon two years early? For a brief moment Glynda could have been convinced it was her mother, the older Rose who she had taught many years before. 

Weiss’s voice snapped her back to the present. “Where are Blake and Yang?”

“We found Team Coffee while defending the colosseum from the White Fang. Blake and Yang went with them down to Vale. Amber too. Yang said she had an idea, but it was hectic up there. I didn’t quite catch what she wanted to do.” 

“Whatever it is, she wants my help,” Jaune said, holding up his scroll with the messaging app open. “I don’t know if enhancing Yang’s Semblance would do much though. I wouldn’t be able to stay with her as she fought.”

A new figure approached from the main road, hard to identify at first in the dim light, but there were few people who wore that style of long dress these days. Salem entered the light around the front of the tower and greeted the students again, before turning her attention solely to Jaune. “I got your picture,” she said. “I sent it on to Eve, and she says Emerald and Mercury are dealt with now too. We’re doing well so far.”

“But Torchwick and Neo are still out there,” Ruby said. “I didn’t go up to fight them on the airship this time.”

“And they’ve already hacked the robots.” Jaune read out more messages on his scroll from Yang. “All over the streets of Vale. They’re turning on civilians just like before. This isn’t good. We should have been able to stop that.” 

“Someone hacked Atlas security?!” Glynda spoke up with alarm. “And you all knew it was coming, because you’ve come from the future. Including _ you. _” She fixed Salem with a chilling stare. 

“Oh, so you do recognize me.” Salem held out a hand, and Glynda shook it through force of habit before suddenly pulling back. 

“They mentioned your name down below, and the deathly pallor and red eyes were a hint. I’m just surprised you’re not in all black.” Glynda rolled her eyes and swished her wand back and forth. “I told Mister Arc and Miss Schnee down there that I’d rather not get involved in any of this, but it’s difficult to tear myself away. But if people are being attacked in the streets, I need to go down and fight. I wish you luck, students. I trust you can do the right thing.”

Glynda started to leave for the Beacon airship bay, but stopped as a rumble shook the ground. “No…” 

“The dragon…” Several of the students’ mouths hung open in horror. They had forgotten about that beast when planning the defense of Beacon, too focused instead on the human instigators of the attack. 

The ground shook again, and again, and in the distance a dark form could be seen hovering where a hill had used to be. Glynda whirled around to face the group again and frantically asked, “How did you defeat that monster in the future?”

Ruby stepped up in front of her and met her teacher’s gaze, with one finger pointing to her face. “Silver eyes,” she said, and Glynda took in a sharp breath. Silver eyes like her mother, who Glynda had seen use them only twice. Silver eyes, the reason Ruby had been brought to Beacon, to be trained as Ozpin’s ultimate weapon. 

“Weiss, get me in the air! We’ll do this just like Argus. I don’t need to watch a friend die to use my eyes this time.” Ruby took command and her partner sprang into action, summoning a queen lancer and helping Ruby aboard. 

“Good luck,” Salem said, and the pair sped off into the distance. “I think I’ll stay well away. Jaune, you needed to get down to Vale, correct? I can take you there. You too, Goodwitch, if you can find it in you to trust me a little.”

“I’ll take an airship.” Glynda turned and left at a brisk walk. 

Jaune stood, and showed his scroll to Salem, open to a map of Vale. “Here’s where Yang and Blake are. Can you teleport me there?”

“Oh, that’s not too far from where Eve is. It will be a long jump, but I can make it. What about you two? Coming to Vale with us?” She extended a hand to Ren and Nora. 

The pair rose from the steps and Ren spoke for both of them. “Someone needs to track down Roman Torchwick. I guess that’s us.”

“Alright.” Salem nodded, and held out her hands. Jaune took them readily, and a moment later both vanished, leaving Ren and Nora as the only ones left on the Beacon campus. 

Far above, a little south of the school’s border and quickly getting farther still, Weiss’s lancer carried her and Ruby directly into the dragon’s path. It had emerged from somewhere beyond Mountain Glenn and was flying north toward Beacon as it had before… or it almost was. Its course had changed ever so slightly from how Ruby remembered, a little west of where it should be, aiming toward the edge of Vale city instead. 

Why would it do that? This was just a Grimm and it had only now spawned from some dark pool beneath the earth. Why would any of their changes to the timeline affect it? But then Ruby remembered Argus, and the other enormous Grimm that only her silver eyes could vanquish. That one had turned away from its goal as well, ignored all the people firing on it as a distraction, all to focus on Ruby and the lamp she had worn on her belt. 

Now the lamp was gone, held safe in its vault in Mistral, but all three of the other Relics were here. With panic and negativity all around, those three points stood out to the Grimm, brighter in the beast’s eyes than all the background suffering of the city. And even though the sword was on Beacon grounds, the scepter and the crown were near to each other and to the dragon, so it was to that location that the beast flew. 

“We need to get it away from the city!” Ruby yelled, her words still barely audible over the wind. “It’s too big to vaporize, and if I petrify it it’s going to crash!”

“We can shoot at it, but can you concentrate if it’s chasing us?” 

“It’s not going to chase us! Remember the leviathan! It wants the Relics and they’re on the ground!” Ruby took a potshot with her sniper rifle anyway as the lancer queen got in range of the giant Grimm. 

“So what do we do?” Weiss mentally controlled the summoned lancer to fly it in a wide circle around the dragon, coming to match its speed and fly beside it as it approached the edge of Vale city. It was ignoring them so far, only turning its backmost eye on each side to follow them while the rest of its six looked ahead. 

Ruby’s scroll rang in her pocket. She almost let it go to voicemail, but after several rings decided to at least look at who was calling, and she saw that it was Salem. She answered the call and the witch’s voice came through instantly, before Ruby even had a chance to greet her. 

“Don’t do your silver eye thing now! Not with me and two Maidens down here! You’ll hit us all!”

“It’s attracted to the Relics! It’s coming for you no matter what!” 

There was a brief pause from the other end of the line, as Salem recalled her experience with the Grimm in Izuruka. “Gods _ damn _ it! Alright, hold still a moment. I’m coming up.”

The call went dead and Ruby shoved her scroll back into her pocket, and yelled back to Weiss behind her. “Stop the lancer! We’re getting another passenger!”

The white Grimm and its riders stopped, and the dragon continued on ahead as if they had never been there at all. There was a soft flare of golden light behind Weiss, and Salem appeared standing on the lancer’s back. She grabbed Weiss’s shoulder to steady herself, and sat with both legs hanging off one side of the insect’s back. She had the scepter of Creation in one hand, and wrapped the other around Weiss’s waist to make sure she couldn’t lose her balance. 

Immediately the dragon ahead of them braked hard as the two Relics it had been aiming for disappeared from its sight. It climbed higher, away from the rooftops below, remembering that there had been a third beacon attracting it from the top of the cliff, but as it circled around in an ascending loop it once again caught sight of the two it had lost. 

Weiss pulled up and made a sharp turn away from the beast. “Why is it coming for us now?” She glanced off to the side as Salem held the scepter out, trying her hardest to ignore the fact that their former enemy was now clinging to her for safety. “You brought a Relic here?!”

“Two, actually! Draw it away from the city. I’ll teleport back then you can do your thing with no one else in the way.”

The lancer sped away without another word as Weiss pushed it as fast as it could go, but every time she looked back the dragon seemed a little bit closer. Below them the southern wall of Vale passed by, followed by the ruined buildings of Mountain Glenn, but they needed to be farther still before it was safe to release the light. 

“Everyone hold on!” Weiss wrapped her arms around Ruby and mentally commanded her mount to make another sharp turn, zipping diagonally down and backward to cut underneath the dragon. Its enormous head tilted down to snap at them at they passed, but a narrow cone of magenta light burst from behind Weiss and caused the beast to flinch away. The lancer flew up again as the dragon slowly turned to face them again. 

“Take us over it this time!” Salem held out the scepter of Creation and waited to be taken into position. The highly maneuverable lancer stuck close to the dragon’s body and carried its passengers up around the beast’s neck, then zipped straight back along the row of spikes out to its tail. A series of huge stone spheres appeared in midair, called one after the other by the Relic’s power, crashing down on the dragon’s back. 

The Grimm roared and lost a bit of altitude, but the bombardment was merely an annoyance. It craned its neck upward but found nothing above, as the white lancer was already far away, and by the time it curved around in another wide arc its prey had a significant lead once again. 

“We’re about to hit the limits of my teleport distance,” Salem yelled forward. She looked back at Vale over a mile away now, judging the dragon’s speed, then thrust the scepter forward over Weiss’s shoulder. “Take this and keep it busy! Bring it back when you’re done.” 

Weiss grabbed the Relic from her hand, but when she looked back to say something to the witch, Salem was already gone. “Whenever you’re ready, Ruby! Target’s still on us. Let me handle the flying, you just do your thing.”

Ruby closed her eyes and tried to ignore the world around her. Yes, she was sitting on the back of a giant insect made of Schnee Aura, high above the ground and moving at an alarming speed, with the second largest Grimm she had ever seen pursuing her with all its might… but there was no need to give that any of her precious attention. What mattered was not where she was, but who she was with. 

She could feel Weiss’s arms around her, keeping her stable even as the lancer twisted and wove complex evasive patterns around the dragon’s bulk. Her partner both on the battlefield and off, with her comforting touch and the special smile she only did at Ruby… Her partner who she loved, who was precious to her, whose life she would protect with all her strength. 

It was easier with practice, to get into the mindset required for her silver eyes. Ever since Argus she had tried at every opportunity, and several times during her time in Atlas the light had responded to her will. All she needed was to do the same again. Ruby thought of her friends, scattered across Beacon and Vale, all fighting for their lives. If this Grimm dragon were eliminated, she could return to their sides and protect them. If this Grimm dragon were eliminated, Weiss would no longer be in danger. Everyone in the vicinity of a Relic would no longer be in danger. 

And what was this beast, anyway? Just a Grimm, nothing more. She had destroyed countless Grimm before and this one was no different. Just the same embodiment of ravenous destruction that was so easily overcome, but still so vital to stop at every chance. From the smallest creep to the largest leviathan, every Grimm had to be fought as if the world depended on it, because to someone it always did. To someone, it was a question of life or death, and what kind of a Huntress would not protect life at any cost?

Ruby could feel a power bubbling up within her, straining to be free, not overpowering her will to protect the people of Vale but merging with it and strengthening it, and her eyes sprung open under the force of a light that raged to be released. For the briefest moment she caught a glimpse of a dark form blotting out the city lights beyond, and then everything around her went white. 

On the streets of Vale, civilians and Huntsmen alike looked up in wonder at the vast bubble of glowing white in the southern sky. There was something comforting about its light, like a sun that one could stare at forever without harm, and the Grimm roaming Vale whimpered and cowered beneath its radiance even from afar. 

The light shrank back to a point and disappeared as quickly as it had come, and where it had been the distant form of the dragon Grimm fell, its wings stiff and unmoving as it tumbled. It dropped out of sight below the rooftops, crashing down through the trees beyond the city’s walls, and all could feel the shock ripple through their feet as it struck the ground and shattered into a thousand shards of stone. 

Above the short line of broken trees and the crater at its end, the white lancer queen still hovered with its two passengers. “Good job, Ruby!” Weiss called to her partner, hugging her from behind and keeping her from slumping forward after the energy that had suffused her body was gone. “Now, I didn’t want to worry you before, but my Aura is getting _ really _ low. I’m not going to be able to hold this summon for much longer.”

Ruby managed a nod as she panted for breath. “Let’s head back,” she said. “I don’t know why that takes so much out of me.”

“At least you’re not falling unconscious for a week this time.” The lancer sped off toward the lights of Vale, and Weiss opened her scroll to contact their friends and teammates. At least some of them were in the nearest sector of Vale, and with her Aura dwindling, Weiss needed to land as soon as she could. 

“Yeah… I’ll be okay in a little bit. It’s not as bad when I do it on command like this. Thanks for everything, Weiss! I couldn’t have done it without you.”

* * *

“What did you say your name was again?” Salem sat on the edge of an abandoned cart on the side of a Vale street. “Sorry if I’m a little out of it right now. I’ve been teleporting all over the place and it is _ exhausting. _” 

“This is Fox,” Yang told her before the red-haired boy could speak up for himself. “Over there we’ve got Coco and Velvet, and the big guy next to Jaune there is Yatsuhashi. They’re Team Coffee.” The two pairs guarded opposite ends of the street from robots and Grimm while a small crowd gathered in the middle. 

“Hello there.” Fox gave a shy wave. “Salem, was it? It’s always good to meet a new friend.”

“I think Fox here can help us,” Yang said. “There’s someone I need to get a message to, and I don’t have her number. A telepathy Semblance should be just the thing we need.”

“I hope she’s nearby. I can probably reach up to Beacon if I shout, but no farther.”

“She’s in southern Mistral territory somewhere.” Yang casually mentioned a place over a third of the world away and Fox balked. “Hey, Amber, can you go swap with Jaune? We’re going to need him over here.”

The Fall Maiden nodded and walked away, and moments later Jaune rejoined his friends and classmates. “Hey. So, what’s the plan?”

“The plan,” Yang said, pacing in a slow circle around the group, “is that I’m going to call my mom.” She looked around at the blank stares and confused expressions that greeted her words. “Raven Branwen was not a very good mother. She doesn’t really care about me or anyone outside her tribe of bandits. But she is very strong, and we could use that strength here tonight.”

Salem raised one eyebrow. “I’m guessing you don’t mean her sword?” Yang shook her head. “How do you plan on getting her to stay here and help?”

“I appeal to whatever goodness she has left. When that inevitably fails, I appeal to her selfishness. The longer this attack goes on, the more Grimm will come for everyone later, including her tribe. And if even that doesn’t get her to stay… then we use the scepter.”

“You mean the crown?”

“No, the scepter.” Yang straightened her posture and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t think my mother deserves all the power she has. She can give what we need to me, and then we use the scepter to send her home safe and sound. Her sword is still more than enough to protect herself and her tribe.” 

Salem burst out laughing, while nearby Blake and Jaune looked on in a mix of admiration and horror. “Yang, I think you might take after your mom a bit more than you realize,” the witch said. “Although, I have to ask… Might it be better if instead of you, we send it to Nora? Just thinking a little longer term here.”

“She said she didn’t want it. There’s always Ren’s cousin, and probably thousands of other candidates, at least. And it’s not like you’re short on time.” 

“I’m certainly not opposed to more power, but are you sure about this? Why do you want to be a Maiden all of a sudden?”

Yang let out a sigh and frowned for a moment before speaking. “In the old timeline, Ruby intercepted Torchwick and Neo on top of one of the Atlas airships. That didn’t happen this time. No one’s stopped either of them. And no one really stopped them last time either! The Grimm got Torchwick, and Neo was carried away on the wind. This time, we’re going to have to really fight them, and we have to win.”

“Ren and Nora are already on it,” Salem said. “But you’re right, they may need help.”

Blake spoke up as well. “Torchwick wasn’t too bad on the train. I just wish I’d thought to steal his cane after I knocked him out.” 

“I know. It’s Neo who worries me more. I couldn’t touch her the first time we fought, and I didn’t fare that much better in Atlas. I probably still can’t hit her with a punch, but I bet I could hit her with magic. She’ll never know what’s coming.” Yang took her scroll out and opened a compass app. She slowly turned in a circle until she faced just a little south of east, and pointed in that direction. “Okay, Fox, Raven should be that way. Once Jaune is amplifying your Semblance, just yell as far as you can. I’ll dictate a message.”

“Are you pointing?” Fox asked. “You know that doesn’t really help me.” He gestured up to his white, sightless eyes. 

“Sorry.” Yang placed her hands on the boy’s shoulders and gently turned him to face toward Raven’s camp, all the way on another continent. “Straight ahead of you now.”

Jaune stepped up to perform his part, but Eve’s voice sounded from behind him. “Fox, have you ever considered getting prosthetic eyes?”

“I have an Ada,” he answered, tapping his ear with one finger. “It’s enough to let me fight.”

“I wear a device that expands my vision to all directions, which connects to an implanted neural relay. Something similar might restore your sight fully, better than a sonar earpiece.”

“I’ll look into it. Or listen in, as it may be. Jaune, whenever you’re ready to do whatever it is that you do now, I’m ready to give a massive headache to anyone unlucky enough to be in front of me.”

Jaune touched Fox’s shoulder and activated his Semblance. “Ready.”

“Okay,” Yang said, stepping off to Fox’s side where she would be safely out of the way of his telepathic blast. “Here’s the message.” The breath caught in her throat and the words she wanted to dictate never came, as above her the sky lit up with silver.

“What is it? What’s up there?” Fox directed his Ada device to scan above him, but nothing registered beyond the tilts of everyone’s heads. 

“Ruby…” There was a low rumble and the ground shook from the massive impact outside the city. “She did it. She took down the dragon before it destroyed Beacon Tower.” Yang grinned with pride in her little sister, ignoring the pained looks from Salem and Eve nearby. Even at this distance, the light of creation burned at the Grimm heritage the witch and her daughters shared. 

“Whatever she did, it must have been good. Coco said the thing was huge.” 

“Ruby’s good at taking down Grimm. Now, the message… Raven Branwen!” Yang paused slightly, and Fox nodded to confirm he had sent the name. “Message from Yang! Come to Yang now! Come to Vale! Leave Vernal behind! Repeat: Raven Branwen, come to Yang and leave Vernal behind.”

Yang ended her message and Jaune stepped back, breaking the connection to Fox. “Well, that’s sent,” Fox told the group. “No clue how far it went, but I’m sure _ someone _ heard it. Lots of people, actually.”

“Thanks, Fox. That’s all I needed. I just hope it works.”

“And I hope Weiss brings the scepter back soon,” Salem said, as Fox returned to his team. “I left it with her because it was the only way to keep that dragon from coming right back at us again.”

“You gave Weiss a Relic? And then you just left?” Yang marveled at the witch’s display of trust in her teammates. “Well, _ that _ ought to convince her you’re serious about working with us. If only Ozpin could see it too.”

A red portal slashed open in the space beside the group, and two women dressed in red and black emerged: one masked, with a red sword in her hand, and the other in a comfortable sleeveless outfit with a chain wrapped tight around her right forearm. Six Faunus in full White Fang uniform followed and took up a guard position a short distance to either side. 

“Yang,” Raven began, “I don’t know what you just did, but I hope it’s for good reason.” 

“It is. Vale is under attack and we could really use your help. But why is the White Fang with you?”

“That would be my doing.” Salem stepped forward, and Raven stiffened and removed the tip of her sword from where she had been just putting it away. “High Leader Khan, I am the one who called you earlier and directed you to Raven as a means of transport. I am glad you made it here. Adam Taurus is still on the loose.”

“Then I shall relieve him of his command.” The tiger Faunus’s ears pricked up and swiveled all around, taking in the sounds of fighting on nearby streets. “This is serious indeed. Targeted violence can send a message, but such a wide, indiscriminate attack can only hurt our cause.” She shook Salem’s hand as it was offered. “Thank you for the warning, and for whatever you did that broke my stalemate argument with Ms Branwen just now.”

“So why am I here? Did my brother not deliver the message I gave him, that I saved you once but you should not expect it again?” Raven glared at Yang through her mask. “Or was it merely _ her _ order to lure me? You do know who that is beside you, I hope?”

Yang reached out to take Blake’s hand, to the opposite side of her from Salem. “We know everything,” she said. “That’s why I called. I want the Spring Maiden’s help tonight.”

“You told me to leave her behind.”

Yang shook her head. “I know it’s you, mom. Vernal is a fake. A decoy you created to throw Ozpin and Salem both off the scent. You found the old Spring and you killed her for her magic.”

“Are you going to kill me for it now?” Raven’s blade drifted upward, but her body twisted ever so slightly to aim her sword arm back toward the empty space where she could create another portal. 

Yang didn’t answer. She looked up beyond Raven and waved her free hand over her head, and a brilliant white lancer queen flew over and settled down behind her. It fizzled into white motes of light and its two riders dropped to the ground, Ruby holding a silver scepter in one hand, Weiss leaning hard on her partner’s shoulder to support herself. They stumbled over to land in Blake and Yang’s waiting embrace amidst cheers of congratulations for Ruby’s feat. 

Ruby was the first to separate herself. “Can’t stop now,” she said. “Jaune, are you up for some more Semblance? Weiss is just about out of Aura, but I’m getting good at this silver eyes thing. If you power her summoning, I can fly through the streets and clear out all the Grimm from the city.”

“Oh, I see how it is, I’m just a battery to you.” Jaune came over to rest a hand on Weiss’s shoulder, and a glow of white and pale blue surrounded them. 

“You’re our friend! …And a battery. Thanks, Jaune.” Weiss stood up straight, and did only the simplest of twirls to thrust her rapier into the ground. A new lancer appeared instantly, and Ruby leapt up to take the frontmost seat on its back. 

“Wait!” Yang held out a hand. “Before you go, we may need that scepter here. Will you be okay without a Relic to use as bait?”

“We’ll be fine. Seems to be the big Grimm that notice it more than little ones anyway.” Ruby tossed the Relic to Yang and reached down to help Weiss and Jaune clamber aboard. “Wish us luck!”

“You got this, sis. You’re going to make Maria proud.”

The lancer turned and zipped away, flying low over the street and out of sight around the corner, only to be replaced by Fox, Yatsuhashi, and Amber running back the other way. Amber stopped alongside Yang and Blake but the others kept going, Fox flashing a quick thumbs-up as his Ada device informed him of the presence of multiple new people in the gathering. They rejoined Coco and Velvet at the far corner, and the team left together to seek out robots and Grimm elsewhere now that this area had been cleared. 

“So, mom, as I was saying… It would be really nice to have the Spring Maiden fighting with us today. Every extra bit of magic really helps.”

“And why should I?” Raven remained with her blade held ready, even as all around her were at rest. “If you’ve thrown your lot in with Salem now, that’s your business. You do what you need to to survive. But I’ve stayed neutral for years and I intend to stay that way.”

“This isn’t about the eternal war. As the news of this attack spreads everyone will be put at risk, including your tribe. You benefit from ending it sooner just as much as we do. Besides, that girl with the umbrella is here somewhere. You can finish what you started on the train.”

“No. I won’t be drawn into this.” Raven shook her head and took a step back. “If you care about saving Vale so much, maybe all these people standing around could be fighting. You don’t need me.”

Yang sprung forward to catch her mother’s arm before she could slash another portal in the air. “You’re right, I don’t need _ you. _ You made sure of that when you abandoned your family. But I do want the Spring magic.” Raven’s head swiveled to stare her down and Yang suddenly regretted being so blunt. But if she was already making her intent absolutely clear, she might as well finish it. “With this Relic, we can transfer the power without anyone having to die. I can even give it back tomorrow.”

Raven stared into Yang’s eyes without flinching. “Not a chance,” she hissed. “I knew Salem would come for me eventually, but using my own daughter is a new low.” She shoved Yang back to break her grip and swung her long blade sharply downward, and a swirl of red appeared in its wake. “Vernal!” she called, turning away from the portal to forgo escape and instead launch an attack forward. 

Her red blade clinked off Yang’s metal arm, and she pulled back a moment as she just now truly noticed the prosthetic. A spray of ice shards sprung from her empty hand toward Blake, but seemed to pass straight through as Blake leapt forward with her Semblance, swords drawn in an instant to protect her partner. 

Vernal stepped out of the portal to answer her leader’s call, but found herself bodily thrown back through as Eve too entered the fray. Beside her Amber’s eyes lit up with orange, but she hesitated to strike. Sienna Khan glanced back and forth at her handful of White Fang soldiers to either side and slowly backed away, keeping her chain tightly wound over her wrist but with her hand up in case she needed to defend herself. 

Salem dropped back as well, even as the others clashed and Raven unleashed more of her magic in a last, desperate attempt to maintain her power and her freedom. “High Leader, don’t go, I can fix this!” Without waiting for a response, she brought up a hand over her head and a circular wall sprung up around her to follow it. In the privacy afforded by the barrier she leaned down and pulled up the bottom of her dress, reaching for the jeweled crown that she had hidden around her thigh. 

She undid the knotted bandanna over the Relic and dropped it to the ground, and stood on one foot to retrieve it. Once it was in hand she dismissed the barrier around herself and thrust the crown onto her head. “Sophia!”

All movement stopped as the green spirit swirled into being once again. “Include Sienna Khan,” Salem instructed, and the White Fang leader jerked out of her stasis to behold the scene around her. “This is your proof that magic is real,” the witch declared. “I have stopped time for all the world except ourselves. With her help–” She pointed up at Sophia. “We can back up a little and avoid a fight breaking out.”

Sienna waved a hand in front of one of the White Fang members’ face and got no movement or response from him. “Impressive. I’ve seen Semblances in speed or time dilation before, but none had this kind of effect. And this is…”

“I am Sophia, a being created by the God of Light to help humanity understand and perfect their choices. I have been graced with the power to alter any one choice of your choosing, three times in each one hundred years. Presently, I have all three of my uses remaining.”

Salem laughed as the spirit delivered the same words she always said upon being summoned. “She’s a little confused about that number of uses, but she’s right about her function. She can rewrite the past to make things better. But first… Sophia, include Yang, Blake, Eve, Amber…” People broke from their suspension one by one as Salem listed off names. “Actually, you know what, I don’t want to forget anyone. Include every person currently in Vale except for Raven Branwen and her friend Vernal.”

“That’s a lot.” Sophia waved a hand and the six White Fang soldiers reanimated, and the sound of fighting resumed from neighboring streets. “But it is done. What choice do you wish to make differently?”

“Raven is not cooperating,” Salem said, pointing over at the Spring Maiden with her swirls of blue and red light frozen in place around her. “Now, knowing Raven, that’s to be expected, but I’d like Yang’s plan to work without anyone getting hurt. There must be some particular instant when she fully understood Yang’s intent to take her power and then resurrect her without it, therefore also a corresponding choice not to go along with it. I’d like her to agree instead.”

Sophia raised one spectral eyebrow. “You realize this is not a choice Raven Branwen would _ ever _ make on her own, right?”

“I do. We tried asking nicely, and you can see how well that went.”

“Hmm. Well, as a magical being of pure Choice, I can tell you that there is literally not a single sequence of words the people here could have spoken that would result in Raven making the choice you want tonight. To have any decent shot at it, you’d have to go back and avert Summer Rose’s death… although that could also easily result in Raven Branwen never becoming a Maiden at all, rendering the whole situation moot.”

Salem crossed her arms and stared up at the misty spirit. “Can you do it or not?”

“Though the choice is not a natural one for her, it remains a theoretically possible course of action. So, it is within my power to force it. However, I must point out, I was meant as a tool to enhance my bearer’s free will by revisiting choices, and you plan to use me to override another’s free will entirely.”

“You got a problem with that?” 

Sophia shrugged. “No, not really. It’s no worse than what Oz used me for during the Great War. I just thought you should know. Is everyone here ready to make the change?”

“Wait.” Salem held up a hand and frowned up at the Relic spirit. “Why do you know about Ozpin using you in the war? I thought it was your first use ever, every time. Are you saying you remember every time I’ve called on you, and you’re deliberately cheating your own restriction?”

For the first time Sophia’s face showed something other than calm or slight amusement. “No, I, uh… I don’t actually remember,” she stammered. “I just… Jinn fills me in whenever she notices time has changed. We can talk to each other over any distance. It still is my first use relative to the real timeline, and after I mess with Raven it will be my first use again. Are you ready for me to do it now?”

Sienna Khan spoke up from behind Salem. “Yes, do your thing. Get it over with so I can do what I came here for.” Around the group, others nodded and confirmed their assent for the choice. 

“Then it shall be so.” Sophia waved a hand toward Raven, and instantly the Maiden’s sword became sheathed and her posture relaxed. The red portal to Vernal vanished along with Sophia herself, and all those who had been struck by one of Raven’s attacks had their Aura restored to its previous level. 

“What the hell did I just say?” Raven demanded. “Fine. Yang, you can _ borrow _ the Spring power. I don’t know what I’m thinking, but… just do it before I change my mind.”

“Eve, if you would…” Salem gestured for the Winter Maiden to step forward. 

Eve’s eyes lit up with blue and she focused her power into Raven’s body, bypassing Aura entirely to shut down her circulation. Raven swayed on her feet and Yang stepped forward to support her and gently lower her to the ground. She removed Raven’s mask to find her mother’s eyes fluttering, barely focusing on her face. 

“Yang…” The barest whisper of a voice reached Yang’s ears and she leaned forward to cradle Raven’s head, dropping the scepter from her hand as the Maiden’s eyes drifted shut and the last muscles in her body went limp. 

A red glow surrounded Raven’s body, paler than her deep red Aura, stretching outward until suddenly it broke away and jumped across the gap into Yang. Immaterial though it was, it seemed to push her backward and up, and as Yang scrambled to regain her feet she found herself coming to rest a few inches above the ground where she had just knelt. 

Her skin felt like it was on fire and freezing at the same time, particularly on her face. Wind whipped around her as she turned, rotating in the air with a mere thought before her legs even moved, and most of the bystanders shank back under her gaze. Yang turned again back to her mother’s form and the Relic laying beside her, and the scepter leapt into her hand. The burning sensation allover her body was starting to subside now and she settled to the ground, even as she raised the scepter over her head. The moment her feet touched the street below, a bolt of lightning cracked upward, departing not from the yellow crystal tip of the scepter but from the hand that held it. 

Yang practically doubled over, panting for breath, as the initial rush of power faded. She straightened up and turned back to Blake and the others with her, both hands clenched into fists and with a wide grin on her face that would not go away. “Ohhh… This feels amazing. Adam’s not going to know what hit him.”

“Speaking of which,” Sienna Khan interjected, “if you’re done, I’d like to deal with him sooner rather than later. After all, he _ is _ plotting to kill me.”

Blake moved to face the White Fang leader. “I can take you to him. I know where he was on the first version of this night. And Amber, would you like to come with us, and help destroy the abusive man who groomed me as an impressionable twelve-year-old?” She snorted with derision. “Yang and I gave him a fair fight once. He doesn’t deserve it again.”

“I’d be happy to help.” Amber joined that side of the gathering. 

“Head out without me,” Yang said. “I know where he’ll be too, but I need to resurrect my mother first and send her home.”

“Alright. Catch up with us when you can.”

Yang smiled at her partner. “I’ll be there for you.”   
Blake nodded and smiled back. “You always are.” She beckoned to Sienna and Amber and the three of them left at a jog, with Sienna’s six attendants following. 

Yang pointed the Relic of Creation down at the empty street in front of her, and concentrated on an image of Raven in her mind. Though her mother had not been present for much of her childhood and Yang had only seen her a few times since then, she didn’t even need to look at the body behind her to know exactly what form to bring forth. Her voice, her mannerisms, her entire personality was stuck in Yang’s mind even from those few brief visits, reinforced by all the years of focus when she had been searching for a trace of Raven through any and every clue. 

A human-sized dome of light formed, golden yellow at first as it always was, but quickly shot through with red. The vibrant color of Raven’s Aura overtook the surface and broke through, dissipating the shell to leave behind a new Raven in its place, complete with a full copy of the same clothing and weapon that the old one still wore. 

Yang helped her up and she gazed upon her own fallen form with interest. “Not every day you get to see your own dead body,” she remarked. Eve took a step toward it with a hand beginning to raise from her side, but Raven waved her off. “Don’t vanish it. If the world sees this, they’ll think I died, and they’ll be right. No one will know I’m still around, so they’ll lay off the hunt for my tribe for a while.”

Raven drew her sword and made a single quick jab of the blade’s tip into the dead Raven’s chest. She sheathed it again and knelt, drawing the duplicate sword from its scabbard and placing it carefully into its owner’s hand. “There. I died in battle, though what I was doing in Vale tonight the world may never know.” She stood and in a single fluid motion waved a portal open beside her, linking back to Vernal who she had left at home, and she left without another word.


	13. Cycle 15 part 1: Enemy of My Enemy

Ren and Nora walked hand in hand through northern Vale, their weapons holstered but within easy reach at a moment’s notice. There were fewer Grimm roaming the streets than they remembered, and the robots which still wandered in pairs were no match for the two extra years of training they had had since the last time this day had come. In front of them a massive plume of smoke rose in the distance from the wreckage of General Ironwood’s command airship, crashed just outside the city walls. 

“So, uh… I guess Ruby did her thing.” Nora looked up at the sky as she walked, though the last traces of silver had faded now. 

“That she did. And it’s our job to handle what Ruby couldn’t. Are you sure this is the right airship?” 

Nora let go of Ren’s hand to prance forward a ways, then turned around to let him catch up. “Of course I’m sure! This one was at the head of the fleet… you know, before it crashed. Where else would the robot-hacking button be?”

“I don’t think it’s a single button.” Ren remained calm through his partner’s antics. Beneath her jokes, Nora’s analysis was sound: Torchwick had been captured and the general would want to keep him close, and if any place would have an open port to the entire robot network it would be the commander’s flagship. 

Just as Ren reached her position, Nora spun and raced forward a ways further. She trotted up to the corner where the street emptied out into a small plaza and peered out, then pulled back and ran back to Ren’s side. “Found them!” she announced. 

“Torchwick and Neo both? Did they see you?” Ren picked up his twin pistols and held them ready as he glanced down a side street. 

“Nope!” Nora slung her hammer off her back and unfolded its handle. “They’re fighting a few griffons in the square. They didn’t see me. Their loss.”

“Good… because someone else sees us.” Ren pointed down the alley to draw Nora’s gaze to the large figure approaching, and gently pushed her hammer down from its ready position. “Hazel,” he said, partly identifying the newcomer to his partner and partly as a greeting to the man himself. “Neither of us wishes to fight you.”

“Nor I, you,” came the deep rumble of an answer. “Too many people have died today. You don’t need to join them.”

“So how about we fight those guys together?” Nora pointed toward the square where Torchwick and Neo were, though the pair themselves were out of sight. “We tracked down the ones who turned all the robots against civilians. You want to help?”

Before he could answer, Ren cut in again. “I understand Salem told you of her recent… change in priorities? We are among those who she’s working with now to save Beacon and Vale.”

“She didn’t mention you being students.” Hazel’s eyes narrowed and his hands drifted toward his deep pockets. “And I’ve also heard Ozpin knows more than he should tonight, and that he’s been recruiting children into his war.”

Ren put away his weapons and pulled out his scroll, sliding it open to show his list of contacts. “Look. We have Salem’s personal number. Does this match the one you know for her?” He held up the scroll for Hazel to see, and the large man nodded. “What exactly did she tell you about tonight?”

“That she had what she needed from the school already, and therefore Cinder and all her plans had become unnecessary. She and some new associates wished to put an end to it all quietly, but Cinder would not acknowledge her order to call it off.”

“She has the Relic of Choice, yes.” Ren named the crown to let Hazel be sure of the full extent of what he and Nora knew. “Cinder is already dead and her team has been captured. We were told you and Eve would fight with us, while Tyrian and Watts are ignoring orders and causing more destruction around the city. Salem gave us all permission to stop them any way we have to.”

“So she’s finally had enough of that smug doctor.” Hazel reached into his pockets and withdrew two handfuls of red Dust crystals. “And so have I.”

“Wait!” Nora threw out a hand to stop Hazel before he jabbed the crystals into his upper arms. “Use lightning instead. Lightning makes me stronger.”

“Alright then.” Hazel put the red crystals back, and retrieved a collection of yellow ones from a separate pouch. He held them ready in his hands but did not stab them into his body quite yet, instead leading the way up to the corner to get a look at the group’s targets. Black smoke hung over the plaza, and the partners in crime rested on the edge of a raised platform, at the foot of a large bronze statue of an unfamiliar man leaning on a very familiar cane. 

“If we need to, you can charge up my Semblance with a touch. That’ll make me strong enough to throw you through the ceiling of Haven Academy’s front hall – not that I’d do that now, of course.”

“That’s an oddly specific example.” Hazel gestured off to both sides with his handfuls of Dust. “Take up the sides. I’ll split them down the middle.” 

Without waiting for a confirmation, Hazel activated his Semblance and jabbed all of the sharp crystals of Dust into his upper arms. His veins bulged with yellow as the infusion quickly spread throughout his body and he roared loudly, catching the attention of Torchwick and Neo. They jumped to their feet and brought cane and parasol to the ready as Ren and Nora split from behind the giant man to sprint in opposite directions around the square. 

Hazel barreled toward the pair standing motionless before him, and crashed through a wall of glass to find both gone, the image of them merely printed as an illusion on the countless shards at Hazel’s feet. He glanced around in confusion and saw Neo to his left, engaging Nora on the far side of the statue, while gunfire drew his attention to the right. 

Ren fired his twin pistols at Torchwick as he ran in a wide arc, pausing only once to cartwheel over the hooked end of the man’s cane as it was fired toward Ren’s legs. Torchwick closed the distance as he pulled the hook back and flipped his cane around in his hand, and he struck against the long blades projecting beneath Ren’s guns. Seeing Hazel coming at him from behind, Torchwick pressed his attack harder, sacrificing a little of his own Aura in the hope of dealing a significant blow to his opponent before he had a bigger threat to deal with. 

The gambit paid off as Torchwick managed to wedge his cane up between the grip and the blade of Ren’s left hand gun. He thrust his shoulder into Ren’s chest and levered his cane outward, flinging the gun from his grip, and gave him a shove backward for good measure as he turned to face the raging giant closing in. Ren grasped across at his upper arm but the sheath where he had kept his father’s knife throughout Atlas was not present here in the past, and so he fell back and disengaged to let his new partner take over. 

Hazel swiped at his quarry with one fist then the other, but Torchwick proved surprisingly nimble, ducking easily beneath the blows and striking back from behind. The hits from the reinforced cane onto Hazel’s legs barely even staggered him, and he spun to throw one fist downward toward Torchwick’s chest. He missed again but kept his momentum going, and a burst of electricity exploded out from the broken cobblestones where he struck, throwing Torchwick back before his overhead strike could connect. 

On the far side of the square, Nora swung wildly with her hammer at the tiny girl who had challenged her. Her first attack missed by an inch as Neo twisted exactly as far as she needed to to avoid it, and the backswing was met with a neat flip over the hammer’s shaft. Neo followed up with a whack of her parasol in its closed form against Nora’s side before cartwheeling away. 

Nora charged at her with her hammer held high, expecting it to be met with an open parasol shield, but Neo lunged forward instead. She vaulted over Nora’s shoulder and pulled her off balance, and thrust with the point of her weapon into Nora’s lower back. Nora stumbled but managed not to fall to her knees, and she shifted her weapon into its cannon form as she recovered. 

Her blast was indeed met with the open shield and Nora sprinted forward through the cloud of pink her grenades left behind, hoping to catch the back end of her unfolding hammer beneath the parasol’s edge. For the slightest moment before she made contact it registered in her mind that Neo seemed oddly still, and then as Nora pushed sideways with the hammer’s handle to bring the head into position, the entire figure before her tipped rigidly and shattered into shards of glass on the ground. 

A sharp blade jabbed into Nora’s side below her ribs, now extended from the tip of Neo’s parasol, and though her Aura was still strong Nora doubled over and fell to one knee. Neo jumped back to preemptively dodge as Nora regained her feet and prepared to launch a new assault, but when it became clear Nora was aiming for another overhead strike she changed tactics. 

Neo stepped inward again and opened her parasol directly into Nora’s body to stop her movement, leaving her arms and the heavy hammer over top of the barrier where they weighed her down but could not continue an attack. Neo dropped her stance lower to let Nora’s momentum carry her forward over top of the parasol, then when her weight was balanced Neo stood up fast to lift Nora slightly into the air. She pivoted up on one foot while collapsing the parasol again, and simultaneously kicked with all her might and shoved with the bladeless tip of her weapon, sending Nora flying across the square. 

“Hazel, behind you!” Ren called out to his new ally and the large man whirled around, ready to face a new threat. He did a slight double take at the sight of Nora arcing through the air toward him, then raised one foot to give a heavy stomp backward, emitting another burst of lightning toward Torchwick. He ran forward a few steps with his arms out and braced himself, and Nora landed safely away from the hard ground. 

“Thanks for the save,” Nora said. Lightning flowed into her body every moment she was in contact with Hazel, so she was in no hurry to jump down and return to the fight when she could channel more energy through her Semblance. 

After a few seconds of Nora laying contentedly over him and soaking up power from his Dust, Hazel heaved the girl up by his shoulder and prepared to throw her back to her own fight. Neo was cautiously approaching him, parasol at the ready with its blade extended… and then she stopped, eyes widening as she looked behind him. Neo leapt to the side following Torchwick’s frantic wave of warning, and a split second later the ground where she had stood exploded under the impact of a rocket from behind. 

Across the plaza an Atlesian Paladin-290 mech entered at a light run and skidded to a stop just beyond the statue’s pedestal. Hazel dropped Nora beside him and the fighting briefly paused as all five combatants looked up. The glass of this one’s cockpit was not tinted red like the others roaming Vale’s streets but instead its normal clear, and within a tall man in a maroon jacket could be seen. From somewhere on the mech’s back a passenger jumped down, waving his long tail menacingly over his head as he came forward to stand beside the Paladin. 

“Tyrian…” Nora lifted her hammer and prepared to charge the scorpion man, but Hazel held a hand in front of her. 

Tyrian grinned widely and brandished his horseshoe shaped blades. “Hazel! Funny meeting you here. And Eve’s new associates too…” He made a show of looking all around the plaza. “But no Eve. Gone off to fight more important battles without you, has she?”

Hazel balled his hands into fists and spared only a quick glance over to where Torchwick and Neo conferred quietly by themselves before challenging his former compatriots. “Tyrian! Watts! Your orders were to stand down! Why are you disobeying your Queen?”

Tyrian pressed a hand to his chest as if scandalized by the accusation. “Disobey the Queen? I would never! But I haven’t heard from her. Only from Eve, and she has no business being here either. So why shouldn’t I do what I do best?”

“Her Grace wants the city and school intact. The mission here is already a complete success. Stand down or you will both be considered traitors to the cause, and you  _ will _ be stopped.”

Watts’s voice was projected from the Paladin’s speakers. “Traitors? If anyone it is Her Grace who has betrayed her own cause. I’ve worked with her fifteen years now and at any other time, she would have welcomed the chaos we bring. We can only hope she comes to her senses quickly.” Though his face was barely visible up above through the tinted glass, his sneer came through loud and clear in his voice. “If you three are falling with her into  _ pacifism _ and  _ mercy _ , then I do believe it’s you who must be stopped.”

Hazel frowned and withdrew more Dust from his deep pockets, white crystals in one hand and purple-tinged black ones in the other. “As you wish…” He jabbed the crystals into his upper arms next to the yellow ones. Though the effects mingled across much of his body, his arms remained distinct: fast air currents swirled around his right side, and his left was cloaked in a dense black fog. He roared again and wind buffeted all around him while his dark shroud grew momentarily and then shrank back. 

But before either Hazel or his former teammates could attack, both sides had their attention caught by Neo, entering the standoff from the side to stand near Nora. She opened her parasol over her shoulder, stared up at Watts inside the Paladin’s bulk, and slowly raised her free hand to give him the middle finger. A wall of glass appeared in front of her, and from their position behind it Nora and Hazel could see that it was printed with an illusory image of Neo in the same position. 

Neo pointed at Nora then waved her finger toward the Paladin, as she ran away from her and Hazel to circle around the mech. Watts swiveled one massive gun-arm to point directly at the illusion, extending it to its full length so the cannon at its tip stood mere feet away from what appeared to be a motionless girl with her insult still raised. Nora’s eyes widened as she recognized Neo’s message to her, and she grabbed Hazel’s hand to siphon one last bit of electric energy into her muscles. 

Watts pulled the trigger and glass exploded in a narrow cone of razor-sharp bits across the square. Nora took her cue and leapt into action, sprinting forward with her hammer low, and she swung a powerful uppercut into the mech’s extended arm before Watts could pull it back. Metal crunched and split and the whole Paladin stumbled back as its right-side energy cannon was violently disassembled. 

Tyrian bounded on all fours toward Ren. The boy was helpless with his scroll held to his ear, and he turned to run as he said a hurried goodbye to the person on the other end. No sooner had he returned the device to his pocket than he tripped, one leg pulled suddenly sideways by the hook of Torchwick’s cane, and he rolled to his back to bring his hands up in front of him. Tyrian pounced, landing on the tips of his blades with both legs up in the air behind him, pinning Ren’s thighs to the ground and licking his lips as he struck forward with his barbed tail. 

Hazel punched forward with his left arm and a blob of pure darkness shot out to strike the Paladin’s central viewport, obscuring Watts’s direct vision to the outside, though his many sensors remained functional and relayed their information to the screens within. Neo jumped up on the mech’s back and stabbed her narrow blade into the joints where one of its rear-mounted rocket launchers was attached, but was thrown off by a violent shake of the machine’s upper body. 

“Some help here, please?” Ren called out to anyone who might be able to save him. It was taking all his concentration just to turn away the stinger that plunged repeatedly down at him with a minimum of Aura loss. But his plea was heard, and seconds later a blast of wind from Hazel’s right fist knocked Tyrian off and allowed him to regain his footing. 

Nearby, Nora took advantage of the darkness coating Watts’s viewport to take a swing at the mech’s legs. Her lightning-powered strike sent a shock through the Paladin, but its legs were more sturdily reinforced, without any delicate weapons systems like those on the arms. Watts kicked at her, and sent Nora tumbling across the battlefield to land near Ren and Tyrian. Undeterred, she joined her new fight with gusto, helping her partner push back against the scorpion man’s sadistic attacks. 

A high-pitched whine came from the Paladin’s remaining energy cannon as the last of the darkness cleared from Watts’s window. Neo scaled the back of the mech once again, confident now that its pilot would not throw her off while trying to aim, and she extended her parasol’s blade just a tiny bit to use it as a particularly long and effective wrench. The Paladin’s left side rocket launcher dropped to the ground and Neo moved on, but froze before reaching the other as she watched the battle in front of her. 

Tyrian, fully aware of the Paladin’s charging sound, whipped his tail around at both Nora and Ren to knock them back, then flipped away to leave the pair alone. Watts’s energy cannon pointed directly at them, past Hazel, and the giant didn’t need to look back to know who was in the line of fire. He slammed his body into the mech’s arm to shove it aside in the last second before its devastating beam activated. He met with less resistance than anticipated and the cannon swiveled just a bit, locking onto a different target who had so far stayed out of melee combat. 

A wide red laser lanced out of the Paladin’s arm and struck Torchwick directly in the chest. He kept hold of his cane as he was thrown across the square to smash against a building’s front, but so violent and sudden was the strike that his hat stayed behind and dropped to the ground where he had stood a moment before. A flicker of orange crossed Torchwick’s body as his Aura strength went from nearly full down to nothing in a single hit. 

Neo’s face contorted with fury and she dropped all efforts to dismantle the Paladin’s second rear cannon. Her blade extended all the way and she leaped out from the mech’s shoulder toward Hazel, who in her eyes was equally if not more responsible for her adopted father’s injury, and vastly easier to attack than Watts in his steel shell. 

She landed atop the large man’s shoulder and clung with one hand to the black and yellow crystals embedded in his arm, as she stabbed over and over again with her parasol. Hazel roared again and twisted his body, but Neo held firm. Finally he reached up at her and Neo tried to push off to take a secure footing on the ground again, but Hazel’s giant hand clasped her ankle as she flipped away. 

Hazel brought up his other hand and shifted his grip on the diminutive girl, barely a quarter his size, lifting her up near his right shoulder. He leaned back a moment, then heaved forward with every muscle in his body, his massive strength amplified even further by wind Dust, and he sent Neo flying high into the air. She tumbled and struggled to right herself but saw that she was tens of feet above the cobblestones, so she flicked open her parasol to prevent a hard landing – but as the wind caught beneath it, Neo found herself drifting higher instead, and she was helpless to stop it as her own makeshift parachute carried her southwest over the rooftops of Vale. 

A black bird flew low over the buildings and squawked once as it passed Neo by. It swooped down into the plaza and circled once around the fighters, then made a beeline for Tyrian. Just feet away from the Faunus and the two students fighting him, a ripple of magic passed over the bird and suddenly Qrow Branwen plunged down with his greatsword at the ready. 

Tyrian swatted away the blade with his tail as he leapt back, preparing to take on three assailants now in place of two, somehow grinning even wider now than before. “As I live and breathe, Qrow Branwen! It’s an honor, truly, to meet you at last.” He flipped back further and landed in a deep bow. “And it will make the Queen so happy to learn of your death.”

Nora stepped back to give Qrow room to swing his massive blade. She could feel her Aura running low now, after the initial beating she had suffered from Neo followed by a long fight against Watts and Tyrian. Ren was likely getting low as well, but it was impossible to tell if Tyrian felt the same. His acrobatics had not slowed and his taunts were no less confident, but Nora knew she and her partner had scored at least a few solid hits. Just as long as Hazel could keep Watts busy, it was three against one here, and Qrow had nearly matched Tyrian once before. 

But Watts and Tyrian were not the only foes still on the battlefield. While Nora stood distracted, catching her breath with her back turned, Torchwick stood and dusted himself off, and raised his cane to aim at her. He fired a single explosive round which struck Nora in the upper back, and the girl skidded facefirst almost to the far edge of the square. And as her Aura cracked and fizzled out, Torchwick turned and ran for the nearest street that could take him away from the battle. 

Ren broke away from Tyrian as well and turned to Nora, but she merely pointed back the other way. Ren whirled around to see Torchwick making his escape and he brought up his automatic pistols in response. Most of the shots went wide, but at least one struck true. Torchwick stumbled and almost fell as he clutched his leg, but supported himself on his cane and limped into an alleyway where Ren could no longer see him. 

Ren raced to Nora’s side to find her sitting against the wall of one of the stores surrounding the square, with her weapon folded back into its compact grenade launcher form. “I’m okay,” she said, before he could even ask. “Aura’s down, but I’ve still got some fight in me. I guess you called Qrow?”

“As soon as those two showed up. I hope it’s enough.” Ren turned and knelt in front of Nora with his pistols raised, taking up a defensive posture alongside her in case a stray attack came their way. 

For the first time Tyrian almost seemed to be on the defensive, as a fully trained Huntsman came at him with none of the fatigue of an extended battle that everyone around him felt. He and Qrow circled around each other with blades flashing too fast to follow, leaving Ren and Nora unable to shoot for fear of hitting their ally. Qrow slowly drifted the pair to one side, leading Tyrian closer to Hazel, positioning the both of them behind the giant in his punching match with a mech even bigger than he was. 

Qrow listened carefully to the sounds of the Paladin nearby, waiting for something he knew had to come eventually, even as the drop in his attention cost him a few hits from Tyrian. And before long there it was: that characteristic mechanical whine that carried through the thuds and crashes. The sound of Watts’s one remaining rocket launcher positioning itself and revving up to fire. With its rear mount it suffered far less movement than the guns on the mech’s left arm, and if battering this berserker with reinforced steel wasn’t enough to bring him down, maybe some explosives could do the job. 

Qrow practically dove around Tyrian to put himself at Hazel’s back. He made one hard thrust forward to push Tyrian away, then turned and grabbed up at Hazel’s arm. There was a flash of magic, and both vanished. Only a crow was left, flying up and away as Watts’s finger clenched on the trigger. Tyrian froze with surprise, more at Hazel’s disappearance than Qrow’s, and in a stroke of bad luck that could not possibly be mere coincidence, he found himself directly in the path of the single small rocket released from his teammate’s Paladin. 

The single crow flew in a wide circle around the statue in the center of the square. Seeing her chance now with Watts exposed and Tyrian still picking himself up off the ground twenty feet back, Nora hefted her weapon once again and released a volley of seven pink projectiles into the Paladin’s bulk. Watts staggered back and when he moved to face her, the mech was slow to respond to his commands. 

Magic surged once again, high above the square, and both Hazel and Qrow reappeared. Hazel dropped down onto the Paladin’s roof and left a cloud of darkness around him as wind burst forth in all directions, while Qrow transformed twice more to glide forward as a crow and then drop again toward Tyrian. 

“ _ Qrow! _ ” Hazel bellowed, as he beat on the mech’s top section and its metal knees buckled under his sudden weight. “What did you just  _ do _ to me?!”

“Saved you from a rocket,” Qrow called back. “If I can take my clothes and weapons into bird form with me, why not people too?” He picked up his duel with Tyrian as if it had never paused and the scorpion man fought defensively now, his smug grin finally wiped away. 

“Where did you  _ put _ me?” Qrow’s unwitting passenger still seemed rather upset about the whole experience. 

“Hell if I know! You’d have to ask Oz how it works.” 

Hazel let out a deafening roar and thrust his left fist toward Qrow and Tyrian, engulfing them both in a cloud of darkness. He stood up off the fallen Paladin and the mech struggled to turn itself over with stuttering movement of its damaged limbs. Hazel helped it along, bringing the front compartment up to show a bruised Watts in the pilot’s seat. A spray of bullets from Tyrian’s wrist-mounted guns struck his side and Hazel looked up to retaliate, and Watts seized his chance to spring the hatch open and clamber out. 

Satisfied that Tyrian was not coming for him directly, Hazel punched after Watts with alternating bursts of darkness and wind, each infused also with traces of lightning from the mostly depleted yellow crystals still embedded in his arms. Watts had a pistol in his hand but elected not to use it, instead merely running as fast as he could to escape a foe he knew he could not fight. Hazel chased him a short ways but Watts was faster, and if any of the blasts struck him they were negated completely by his Aura. 

Watts disappeared around a corner and Hazel turned back to join the last remaining fight. Tyrian fought more with his tail than his blades now, preferring to keep most of his body out of reach as he led Qrow on a slow circuit around the square. Hazel threw a blast of wind toward him as he approached and Tyrian dodged out of the way, only to be hit instead by a single shot from one of Ren’s pistols. Flickers of deep purplish blue passed over him and he lunged at Qrow again, scoring a heavy hit but taking one more of his own as well, and the colors crackled brighter for just a moment then faded out. 

Hazel shoved Qrow aside and grabbed at the scorpion man’s clothing. He pulled Tyrian forward by his vest and wrapped a single giant hand around his throat, completely ignoring the stinger that plunged repeatedly into his own chest and shoulders. Tyrian struggled desperately as he was lifted into the air, first prying at Hazel’s hand then resorting to stabbing with his wrist mounted blades, and soon Hazel’s upper body was drenched with blood as he allowed the attacks to hit him, saving the last bits of his Aura to maintain the numbing Semblance that kept him going. 

Hazel pulled back his other hand in a fist and scowled at his former teammate. He stared Tyrian in the eyes silently for a moment, enduring several more stabs in the process, then slammed his fist forward into Tyrian’s face. There was a sickening crunch even as Hazel let go, and Tyrian skidded back and sprawled limp on the ground. Hazel stepped up to stare down at him, but he did not rise again. 

From the side of the plaza, Nora and Ren stood and made their way to Qrow and Hazel’s side. “I’m sorry you had to fight your own team like this,” Ren offered. “But thank you.”

Hazel turned to stare at him and slowly reached up to pluck Dust crystals one by one out of his upper arms. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he said. He tossed the yellow crystals over his shoulder and some of them exploded in a small burst of lightning, but others were so spent that they merely broke on impact with no effect. The white and black crystals were wiped down on Hazel’s pants and returned to the pouches they had come from. 

“One of you should report back to Her Grace. I’m going to check myself into the nearest hospital. I have enough Aura left to walk there before I start feeling this.” Hazel turned and walked away, still bleeding profusely from two dozen stab wounds and with enough scorpion venom in him to paralyze a smaller man. 

Qrow rested his sword across his back again and clapped Nora and Ren on the shoulders. “Good job, kids.”

“I don’t know, I kind of feel like Hazel did all the work…” Nora flashed a grin at Qrow. “Thanks for helping out. We would have had a bad time without you.” She gestured down at her empty launcher and Auraless body. 

Qrow wandered over to look down at Tyrian’s body. “So mister scorpion here’s finally bit the dust. About damn time.” He put a hand to his side where Tyrian’s stinger had once sliced through his flesh, poisoning him for weeks without medical care. In this new timeline, he would no longer even have the scar. 

“Salem wanted him alive,” Ren commented. “I’m sure she can bring him back if she wants to. But I hope she doesn’t.” He opened his scroll to send a message to Salem and typed, “Ren here, with Nora and Qrow. Tyrian is dead, Watts is on the run. Torchwick escaped with a wounded leg. If the Grimm don’t get him, the police will. Hazel helped us but was injured.”

A response came back within seconds. “Don’t bother chasing Watts,” Salem sent. “He’ll be on the first airship out of Vale. All is well here. The ally I was waiting for finally showed up. She’s on her way to Adam right now.”

Ren sent a quick acknowledgement of the news, then slid his scroll back into his pocket. “I think Nora and I are done with fighting for today. We’ll head back up to Beacon and check on Pyrrha and Penny. If we run into anyone we know, we can tell them this all should be over soon.”

“Alright.” Qrow nodded. “I’m sure there’s plenty more Grimm out there for me. You two stay safe.” In an instant he was gone, and a black bird flew away over the city. 

* * *

“Nothing!” Ozpin paced back and forth and swished his cane, as his captive audience of one looked on. “That’s what my trip around the world just now has accomplished. Absolutely nothing!” He paused slightly to look out over the cliff at the edge of Beacon and shook his head, then resumed his pacing. 

Xuri tentatively spoke up now that her professor had stopped and was fuming in silence instead. “What was supposed to happen?” 

“I was supposed to get the Relics of Creation and Knowledge!” Ozpin whirled to face her and thrust the end of his cane into the ground. “But I have neither, because the Winter and Spring Maidens aren’t where they were supposed to be.” He let out a breath through gritted teeth and tightened his grip on the cane’s handle. 

“I went to Atlas first,” Ozpin continued, then paused a moment as Xuri vanished and reappeared. “The situation with Winter has been precarious for a while now. Ten years ago – no, eight years – the Winter Maiden died of old age. She’d been on state of the art life support for ages, but then there was an attack and the power went out, and she died. I never got proof it was Salem’s doing, but it had to be. 

“The next Winter was a veterinarian in Mistral. I tried to take her in for training as soon as I found her and that backfired spectacularly. She didn’t want the magic at all. She lashed out and ultimately one of her friends shot her in self defense. I never met the next one, only got assurances from the Atlas Council that she was in good hands working for them. But of course when I went looking for her, I find out she disappeared just days ago, and General Ironwood can’t help because he’s been here in Vale all semester.”

Xuri listened and tried to keep her face neutral. Hadn’t Salem told her there were other Maidens in Vale tonight, and that Xuri could meet them? All she had to do was call the number she had been given… “Do you have any idea where she could be?” she asked, feigning ignorance. “Or what she looks like, so someone like Qrow might be able to find her again?”

“No, it’s too late for any of that.” Ozpin’s gaze focused on the distant trees as Xuri blinked out again, and his attention did not return to her face once she was back. “I did get a glimpse of the latest Winter Maiden recently and she’s under Salem’s control. She looked like she could be the previous one’s sister. I remember checking for eligible relatives at the time and finding none, which means  _ she _ must have got to her first and made her disappear.”

Ozpin slammed a fist down on the top of his cane and a translucent green net burst out in a hemisphere from its base, knocking Xuri back a few feet before it faded. “Which means Salem has had Creation for who knows how long! I had hoped it was recent, maybe during my team’s travels in Atlas. The vault door was closed today when I looked, but I’m sure there’s nothing behind it. I tried to open it anyway – I created those vaults, you know – but I was defeated by my own lock. And the one at Haven was no better.”

“What was the problem there? Is that Maiden on Salem’s side too?”

“Spring is on no one’s side but her own. I know exactly who she is and where she lives, and what did I find when I went there? She was gone! Her whole camp was there but she’d left through a portal just minutes earlier. The ones I interrogated babbled about some voice in their heads, and the leader of the White Fang, and all sorts of nonsense.” 

“But why do you need these Relics now anyway? Glynda mentioned something happens when you get all four? You get one chance to… something.”

Xuri’s question was innocent enough, but Ozpin glowered at her and began pacing once again. “This is not information I give out lightly,” he said, “but since the world as we know it seems to be ending and this is our last chance to stop her, I suppose I will have to be more open.”

Ozpin took in a deep breath and then let it out slowly. “This world was created by two gods, long ago. They gave humanity the gifts of Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and Choice, alongside magic for all and the wisdom of their personal counsel as they lived among us. Salem stole immortality from the gods and waged war on them, intending to usurp their position entirely. The effects of their final battle can still be seen today.” He stopped and pointed up at the night sky, where the moon hung with its fragments scattered about to one side. 

“The gods saw what was happening to their creation, and they decided it would be better to abdicate than to let everything be destroyed in the crossfire. They left our world, but gave the Relics so that the worthy among us might act as gods in their place – their power separated into four so that we would remember the importance of unity despite our differences. But if a single person  _ were _ to collect all four, this shall call the gods back to see what we have become. If they are pleased with the world, they will once again live among us and give their blessings to all.”

“So…” Xuri began to speak, but blinked away and back again before continuing. “Wait, that’s the Tale of the Two Brothers, isn’t it? That’s all true just like the Four Seasons?” Ozpin nodded solemnly. “How do you know all this? Maidens you can see, but the history?” And was he leaving anything out? Xuri had gotten the impression from Glynda earlier that calling the gods back to Remnant could potentially backfire, but Ozpin hadn’t acknowledged that possibility at all during his story. 

“I too am immortal. I knew Salem before she tried to overthrow the gods, so when they left they made me her equal, to keep her in check.”

“What’s she trying to do now, with the gods long gone? With such a different world now, she must have different goals as well.” If the witch’s own words were to be believed, she was trying to protect the people of Vale tonight. But that clearly was not what Ozpin thought of her, and Xuri’s curiosity had been piqued by the differences in the accounts she had heard. She looked down at the golden sword in her hands with renewed wonder at the divine power contained within. 

Ozpin stared Xuri down with narrowed eyes. “Do not make the mistake of trying to seek her out and reason with her. That way lies only death. Salem’s lust for power drove her to become part Grimm, and she will not hesitate to act like one. If she sees that you hold a Relic she  _ will _ take it, and you will be lucky to escape with your life.”

Those words more than anything made Xuri want to speak with Salem again, for Ozpin’s description was so vastly different from the woman she had met earlier. She resolved to call the witch when she got a free moment, and hoped that might put to rest some of the contradictions that she had heard. 

“There is no room for kindness in Salem’s heart,” Ozpin continued. “Any apparent selfless act is calculated and weighed into her cunning schemes, all for the eventual purpose of destroying all that we know. Recently she has stolen away many of my best Huntsmen and Huntresses with promises of redemption and change, and I fear she is about to reveal herself to the world as a savior. She will watch the masses fall in line, uniting behind a strong leader in their time of need, unaware that their struggles were engineered by Salem herself.” 

Ozpin stared out over the city below. “And I would sooner give up my immortality and face oblivion than see a world ruled by  _ her. _ If the public knew the truth, I know they would agree.” 

“So what are you going to do?” Xuri asked as she stepped up beside him to gaze down at the sea of lights. 

“The only thing I can. I’m going to take this world and its future back. And if that means I have to fight my own former students, so be it.” Ozpin clicked the trigger of his cane and its length collapsed back into the handle. He hung it on his belt and cracked the knuckles of both hands. “Beacon is safe enough now. It’s time to go down below. We will find Salem, and we will negotiate for the Relics she’s stolen in the only language she understands. With force.” 

He stepped back several paces away from the edge of the cliff and Xuri quickly spun to face him, lest he see that the magical gear emblem on her back was no longer there. “You’re going down to Vale… from here? Without a shuttle?”

“Why do you think I throw children off a cliff on their first day at Beacon? It’s in preparation for a day like this, when we Huntsmen are called upon to defend our city. Now come. You will use your own landing strategy… and I’ll use mine.” 

Ozpin closed his eyes and pressed his hands flat together in front of his chest. He mouthed silent words to the sky and his entire body began to glow, but not in the deep green of his Aura. A pale golden light surrounded him and grew brighter for just a second, then inverted into a vibrant purple, and it flicked back and forth between those two extremes faster and faster until Ozpin seemed to be enveloped in a spinning shroud of both colors at once. 

As Xuri watched, the competing auras split and shrank, leaving most of Ozpin’s body and clothing alone as they settled into a pair of glowing motes behind him. Each flared up for just an instant and forced her to look away, and when Xuri recovered from the flash and looked back, she saw that Ozpin now sported a large and glowing pair of bat wings. The right side was purple and the left gold, and each seemed to emerge directly through the fabric of his black shirt without harming it. 

“The gods did not create humanity in their own image,” Ozpin said ominously, not even looking at Xuri to see if she was listening. “But with their blessing, we can approach it. I am their appointed guardian and steward, regent during their absence… and my judgement of this world is already made.” He sprinted forward and dove off the edge of the cliff, spreading his wings wide to glide out over the city, and left Xuri behind with only the Relic and her thoughts. 

* * *

Professor Goodwitch and General Ironwood stood back to back at the intersection of two of Vale’s main streets. With wand and pistols at the ready they faced down Grimm and robots from all directions, dispatching wave after wave from what seemed like an endless supply. They had been there some time already and both found their Aura levels less than they would have liked, but the Grimm showed no signs of stopping as the general panic of the city around them grew. 

The robots were even worse. Though a less common sight than beowulves or creeps, they invariably arrived in groups of at least four, and dodging the shots of one often placed the fighters into the path of another. It didn’t help that half the time, the General hesitated before reluctantly firing back upon his creations. 

“Just how many of these did you bring to Vale?” Glynda accused, as she sent homing purple bolts against another pair of Atlesian robots. 

“All that I could spare.” Ironwood dispatched a pair of his own, then holstered one pistol to retrieve a spare magazine for the other. “I see now that was a mistake, but I stand by my assessment that the Vytal Tournament was vulnerable to attack.”

“Do you have any idea how your robots were hacked? I know Roman Torchwick delivered the virus, but he can’t have written it.” 

Though it pained him to admit it, he did. “I have to assume it’s someone on the inside, but I can’t for the life of me think who. Every unit is triple-checked before it ships. This has to be a long game, someone compromised HQ well in advance so they could slip a backdoor in. Only the original design team would have easy access to the base level programming, but it can’t be any of them. Dr. Polendina is beyond reproach, Dr. Watts has been dead for years, Dr. Perintol retired after Pietro beat him to creating the first sentient synthetic life…”

“Once this is all over, I may have a way to find out,” Glynda said, savoring a brief moment of rest even as she could see another pack of Grimm in the distance. “The whole dynamic of this war is shifting. There’s a rift within Salem’s faction, and as far as I can tell she’s working  _ against _ the instigators of this attack. She’s here in Vale, personally. I’ve seen her!”

Glynda scanned all four directions quickly, and turned Ironwood to point his attention to the crowd of beowulves a few blocks away. “I think there’s a rift in our side, too. You should have been at Ozpin’s meeting earlier. He ignored me, effectively fired Qrow, then dragged Xuri against her will to Vacuo. The poor girl’s a nervous wreck already, and today’s new Oz isn’t helping. Has he ever told you what happens if all four Relics are gathered together?”

“He has not.” Ironwood shook his head. He brought up both his pistols again and took one last glance to the sides before focusing on the Grimm bounding inward from the front. “Tell me in a bit. We’ve got – what’s going on out there?”

A wall of radiant white swept forward down the street and both Glynda and Ironwood held their fire, waiting to see what it would bring. It advanced faster than either of them would be able to run away, faster even than the beowulves, a wave as high as the rooftops around them surging forth over lampposts and parked cars like they were no obstacle at all. 

The light engulfed the pair and for a moment each was blinded, unable to see even each other mere feet away as it seemed the air itself shone. But despite their helplessness without sight, with the brilliance came a pervasive sense against all logic that all was safe and well, that no harm could befall them here, that by this light they were  _ protected. _

It faded just as quickly as it had come, rushing back and shrinking into a point in front of them, revealing its source at the center. A white Grimm hovered before the pair, a queen lancer, with three of Glynda’s own students on its back. No trace remained of the beowulf pack except a thin smoky haze high over the street. 

Ruby grinned down at them and waved. “Hello again Professor, hello General Ironwood! How’s it going?”

“Very impressive, Miss Rose,” Glynda called back. “I only had the opportunity to see your mother in action a couple times, but I believe you may have surpassed her already. Without your help we might never have taken down that wyvern.”

“Yeah, it would have knocked the top of Beacon Tower off and brought down CCT signal for a year and a half,” Ruby replied nonchalantly. “But not anymore! I learned from the best. Do you remember the Grimm Reaper? She’s still alive and she taught me all about silver eyes and how to use them!” 

Ruby peered down both side streets. “Anyway, got to go! I see more Grimm to vaporize over there. Take us away, Weiss!” The lancer made a sharp right turn to show Weiss and Jaune sitting behind Ruby, and sped away in pursuit of the young Huntress’s next targets. 

“So that’s the power of silver eyes,” General Ironwood said softly. “I’ve heard the legends of silver eyed warriors. Oz mentioned he had one in this year’s class, but I’ve never seen them in use. Did she say the Grimm Reaper had silver eyes too?”

“That must be what made her so good,” Glynda replied. “I can’t believe she’s still around. The Grimm Reaper was active when I was a kid, then dropped off the map the same year I graduated.” She pointed down the opposite way from where Ruby had left. “Robots incoming. Again.”

“Before they get here, then… what was that about the Relics being brought together?”

Glynda pursed her lips and considered her words carefully before she spoke. “He’s told you about the gods, how they made the Relics and then left the world. I don’t know why he chose to tell me more, and not you or Qrow, but… apparently, with all four Relics together, it’s possible to call the gods back.”

“What? No, he never said anything of the sort to me. But he had all four at Vytal, didn’t he? When he first gave them to the new Academies. Why hasn’t he called the gods yet?”

“Because there’s no guarantee they’ll come in peace. It’s a coin toss, magic for everyone or the end of the world. Worse than a coin toss, really. Humanity has to be united in peace. It’s what Oz has been working toward all this time. Now from what I can tell, Oz and Salem both have been affected by the Beacon Relic somehow, and I hardly recognize either of them. He wants to unite the Relics now! I don’t think the world is ready.”

“Not after tonight… and it’s my fault. Everyone will be angry with Atlas after this.” Ironwood faced down the robots approaching in a platoon of ten, only to be redirected toward six more coming from his left. 

The ten Glynda had implicitly claimed for herself split their ranks into two single file lines of five, marching diagonally forward and out to leave a wide channel between the halves. Through the center a single new figure walked behind them, thinner than the bulky metal men, clearly a living human who for some reason was not being targeted by their misdirected programming. 

As the lone human walked down the center of the street, the furthest pair of Atlesian robots slowed and came to a halt. On either side as she passed, the robots dropped their weapons and bent down into a deep bow. The rest continued their march but after a short ways further, the next pair stopped and bowed as well, and then the next. Glynda gently tapped Ironwood on the shoulder to silently call his attention to the stranger, though he was loath to take his eyes off the six robots spreading out along the width of the cross street. 

The newcomer reached the intersection perfectly in line with the final pair of robots flanking her, those two throwing down their guns and bowing as she passed just like the ones before them. In the light of the corner streetlamps Glynda could see she wore a black leather catsuit and had a strange ring around her head, but her face was not familiar. 

She continued out into the open space where the pair waited, and the second pack of robots dropped their guns in submission in the same manner as the first. Glynda and Ironwood kept their own weapons at the ready, prepared for a trap, but whoever this strange woman was, she appeared to be unarmed except with the unnerving loyalty of the robots all around. 

“Greetings, Goodwitch, General.” Eve came to a halt in front of them and stared directly ahead. “You’re in my way.” Though there was twenty feet of open asphalt on either side, it was true that the pair stood directly on the center line where Eve had also walked. 

“Who are you?” General Ironwood demanded. 

“See for yourself.” Eve turned in place to show him the large emblem across her back. 

“That’s the symbol of Atlas…”

“…Merged with the symbol of Salem,” Glynda finished. “It was you who hacked the robots. That’s why they don’t harm you.”

“It was not.” Eve remained facing away for these words, only a moment later seeming to realize that she should show her human eyes to those she spoke to. “That virus was written by Arthur Watts, who gave it to Cinder Fall, who gave it to Roman Torchwick.”

“Watts is alive?” It had been many years since Ironwood had seen the expert coder and engineer, and he had missed having access to all his work… though he held no particular fondness for the man himself. 

“He was a few hours ago,” Eve answered. “Maybe someone has corrected that by now. I don’t know. But he is the one responsible.”

Glynda decided to take a chance – so long as the witch’s servant remained nonhostile, she might be able to learn more about the chaos on both sides. And the quickest way to do that was to be blunt. “What is Salem’s goal here tonight?” she asked. 

Surprisingly, she received an answer. “To prevent the Fall of Beacon, more specifically to prevent the death of Pyrrha Nikos, and thereby prove herself to those she has asked for help.” 

“I was with Miss Nikos and her friends earlier. She was grievously wounded, but she is alive.” 

“So I’ve heard. Of the three main threats to Beacon and Vale tonight – Cinder Fall, Adam Taurus, and the Grimm dragon – two are already dead, and I expect the third will soon follow. All of this is the work of Salem and her new team. Ozpin has not yet been sighted in battle, and he tasked the Summer Maiden and the Relic of Destruction with the defense of Beacon’s grounds alone. Were it left to him, hundreds more would die tonight. Right now, I am doing my part to clean up the streets.”

A metallic screeching, crunching sound burst from behind Eve, and in the distance all could see the farthest pair of Atlesian robots crumple to the ground, their heads rolling a few feet away from the bodies. The sound came again as the next closer pair of robots also had their heads ripped off their shoulders in unison, and before long all ten robots lay in pieces. 

“Like so,” Eve said calmly, as the six more at the mouth of the side street crunched one after the other and dropped to the ground. 

“How are you doing that?” General Ironwood asked. “There is no self destruct function, only an option to power off. What have you done to my robots?”

“You misunderstand… They don’t recognize me and choose not to attack. My control over them is purely physical, not electronic. I could do the same to you, if I were ordered to.” Though she did not show it, Eve was relieved to let go of the crowd of robots. Forcing one into submission and locking its body in place was simple enough, but sixteen was a lot, especially given the distance between one end of the crowd and the other. 

She reached her magic out again to wrap around Glynda and Ironwood, much more gently than her control of the machines, familiarizing herself with them but not yet exerting any force. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, the Atlesian military continues to make quite a mess of this city. Why  _ did _ you have to bring so many robots?”

Eve’s eyes suddenly flared up with blue, showing her identity at last even as she still had not given her name. Glynda and Ironwood were magically thrust out in either direction and their arms locked down to their sides, though unlike the robots before them, their weapons remained in their grip. From the waist down both were paralyzed and an invisible force shoved into their upper backs, harder and harder through their resistance until both were pressed into a bow. Eve walked between them along the center line of the road, continuing on her way as if nothing had ever stopped her at all. 

“I do hope you two will consider your place in this conflict carefully,” she called back to them. “What do you trust more? Ozpin’s word, or your own eyes?” The telekinetic control over the two’s bodies faded and they stood up straight again, but Eve was already walking into the distance without an answer. 

General Ironwood brushed at his coat and straightened it over his shoulders. “Was that really…”

“The Winter Maiden, yes. Salem’s reach is longer than we realized.”

“But she works for…” Ironwood made a disgusted noise and dropped his face into his palm. “They must have cut me out of more than I knew. The SDC and the rest of the Council. Salem’s been running my entire kingdom right under my nose. The Winter Maiden is one of my own Special Operatives and I didn’t even recognize her outside of uniform. Did she change her hair too? I just… I…”

“What are you thinking?” Glynda made a slow circle to check out all four streets leading away from them, but for the moment at least, no further threats were in sight. 

“I… don’t know anymore. If I’ve been this blind… I’ve always tried to do what I thought was right, but I’ve been played for a fool by both sides. I should have been at that meeting with Oz earlier, seen him for myself. If he’s gone off the rails like you said, then I’m really out of ideas. At this point I don’t trust my own judgement anymore, and if I can’t fall back on him… and I certainly don’t trust Salem either no matter how much good she takes credit for, I’m not  _ that _ much of a fool… Glynda, can you lead us? Can you show me the right path?”

Glynda was silent for a long moment, and she subconsciously began pacing again as multiple trains of thought raced and collided within her mind. “I’ve spoken to Oz and Salem both this evening,” she said finally. “And I think… we should return to Beacon. We check on the students and the staff, and prepare to pick up the pieces after whatever happens tonight. We show the world that our kingdoms are still united in peace despite the robot fiasco. Because after all, that’s what the Vytal Festival is all about.”

* * *

Natasha Ren was exhausted. It was late, and she had had a long day’s work on her family’s farm. This wasn’t normal – most days she was kept busy acting as tech support for the entire village of Farran – but her mother had needed an extra pair of hands today. It was time to plant the next set of summer vegetables, and as long as her father was still recovering from his latest Grimm-inflicted wound, she would have to put her usual job on hold. 

Her scroll rang in her pocket and she set down the open tube of toothpaste in her hand to see who was calling this late at night. To her shock, it was not a Vacuo-based telemarketer who had inadvertently called outside their own time zone, but a name she knew: her own cousin. Maybe he had intended to text as usual but hit the wrong button? Natasha let it ring a little longer but the call never cancelled itself, so before it went to voicemail she tapped the screen to accept the call. 

“Hello, Lie!” she greeted him. “What’s up?”

“Have you seen the news?” Lie’s voice was tense, and his words put Natasha on edge. 

“No, I don’t think anyone has. The town’s CCT relay got misaligned when dad smashed a beowulf into it yesterday, and I’ve been too busy planting seeds to fix it yet. It’s still taking in signals which is why you can call me here, but it refuses to broadcast anything to TVs now. Probably just a loose wire somewhere. What’s happening out there?”

“Nothing good,” Lie responded. “Don’t tell anyone else for now, and take your time fixing that relay. You should know, but I don’t want to cause a panic. There’s been an attack on Beacon and Vale. I’m okay. Nora is with me and she’s fine too. But our teammate Pyrrha is injured, and Jaune is still out fighting. Things are going a lot better than they could be, but it’s still bad. Some of the attackers escaped.”

“Oh no…” Natasha left the bathroom sink behind to go sit down on the edge of her bed. “During the festival too, that’s horrible. Who would do this? Do the police or the Huntsmen know yet?”

“I know exactly who’s responsible, because my friends and I have run into them before. This time we were prepared, but it’s still a difficult battle. There’s so much I need to tell you, but it’s too sensitive to say over the phone. Could Nora and I come visit you in Farran soon?”

“Uh, yeah, probably. Let me go ask mom.” Natasha trotted down the stairs with her scroll still held to her ear and found her mother in the kitchen, fixing two mugs of hot herbal tea. “Hey, mom, Lie and Nora want to visit! Can they stay with us?”

Eissa Ren answered without turning around as she dropped teabags into the hot water. “Of course, honey, that sounds great. It’s been so long since we’ve seen them. They’ll be all grown up now, just like you! Training to be Huntsmen too…” She picked up the mugs of tea and carried one to her husband in the next room, who was laying on the sofa with one leg elevated and wrapped in bandages. “Can you ask when they’ll be arriving?”

Natasha relayed her mother’s request and on the other end of the line, Lie paused to think. “As early as in a few days,” he said finally. “My team’s already out of the tournament, and I don’t know any of the remaining singles round fighters. That’s assuming the tournament even continues, though. I’m guessing all of Beacon’s exams will be canceled. Really, I won’t know much until this attack is over.”

There was one more important thing to tell her. “It won’t be just me and Nora visiting,” Lie said. “Just us staying with you, of course, but I know my friends are going to want to see Farran too. And one… new friend, I suppose, who… sorry, I don’t think I can talk about that yet. I promise we’ll explain everything that’s going on when we get there.”

“Of course.” Natasha held the scroll away from her head. “He says soon.” 

“I’ll help you clean out the guest room tomorrow. Not now though, it’s late.” 

Natasha gave her mother a silent thumbs-up as she put her scroll back to her ear and wandered away. “We’ll be ready whenever you want to show up,” she said. “I’m excited to meet all your friends from Beacon. You said Nora’s with you, right? Can you put her on?”

Hundreds of miles away, her cousin passed his scroll to his partner and picked up his twin pistols again. It was his turn to keep watch while Nora talked to their old friend, because even though Beacon’s grounds were much safer than they had been an hour ago, the danger was still far from past. 

“Hi Breeze, it’s Nora!”

Natasha froze in place, halfway up the stairs. “What? How did you… That’s… I just thought of that name like a week ago!” She scrambled up the rest of the way and shut her bedroom door behind her. “I didn’t think I’d told anyone yet but I guess I must have mentioned it to Lie. I think I like it better than Natasha, but my dad’s really insistent that I have a ‘normal’ sounding name and not, you know, a gentle wind.” 

“Breeze is a nice name and your dad can get over it.” 

Natasha laughed. “I wish. Ideally I think my name should be literally the sound of wind through trees in the spring, but that’s just not something most people can pronounce. Anyway, how have you been? I haven’t talked to you in forever!”

“Things have been great!” Nora exclaimed. “Ren and I have… wait. I mean… It’s  _ weird _ having more than one Ren around!” 

“Sounds like there’s naming problems for both of us. Also, can I just say, I’m so jealous of your voice. You sound amazing and I wish I could too, instead of this horrible deep voice.” Natasha let out a sigh and continued. “Honestly, that’s the most annoying part. You have to catch it early or it’s just like this forever and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Oh, yeah, how’s all that going? With your parents and everything? Are they… you know, okay with you being a girl?” Nora grimaced, anticipating a bad answer. 

“Ehh… mostly?” That was better than a no. “They’re far from perfect, but they’re learning. Mom’s learning faster than dad. Mom’s a bit of an enabler, really.” Natasha laughed as she recalled the time shortly after she had come out. “I think she always wanted a daughter, but only had my brother and me. She kind of went overboard with pink clothes and even bought me a set of dolls. I had to gently explain to her that I’m the same person and my interests haven’t changed, I just wanted to be called by a new name and pronouns, and that I need to swap out my body’s current hormones for better ones.” 

“Oh… wow. That’s…” Nora trailed off and she could feel tears beginning to well up in the corners of her eyes. “That’s amazing. They’re actually listening to you, and making an effort?” Nora’s sniffle could be heard clearly on the other end of the line. “Now you’re the one making  _ me _ jealous.”

“Aww, it’s okay. I’ll share my parents if you want. I think it will be good having you up here for a bit, so I’m not the only trans girl around for once. You can show my mom and dad that it’s not as big a deal as they sometimes make it out to be. I just got shipped the wrong model of human body, that’s all. And since there’s no customer service desk to complain to, I just have to DIY a little.”

A customer service desk for life… In a better world, the Brother Gods might have filled that role. Nora thought back to Jinn’s vision and the glimpses of Remnant’s creators that she had seen: two beings of immense power, living among the people, with audiences granted to any who could make the trek to see them. Certainly they had the ability to alter whatever they chose into a new form. 

But would they? Most likely not. The God of Light’s mountain peak alone was an insurmountable barrier to the old or disabled, and for those who managed to make the climb even a reasonable request might be denied. Nora had not witnessed the gods’ actions at any great length but even those few moments spoke volumes into their character: they had no desire to use their godly power to serve their people, only to enforce their will and receive the adulation they thought they deserved. 

“This is going to sound odd,” Nora said, “but what you said just reminded me of something. Breeze… what’s your favorite fairy tale?”

“Oh, definitely The Girl in the Tower,” came the immediate response. “No question about that. Kind of feels like a trans metaphor really, though I liked it even before realizing. And not just like ‘this body is my tower’, but the way she–”

Natasha stopped short as a muffled voice came through. “Just a minute! Yes, I know… Here, just use this one.” Suddenly Nora’s voice became clear again. “Sorry, Ren – Lie? Wanted his scroll back. Got to keep in contact with Jaune. I gave him mine instead. What were you saying before?”

Natasha swapped her scroll to the other hand and laid back on her bed. “Let me just give you the whole thing to be sure. Once upon a time there stood a lonely tower, which sheltered a lonely girl. You’ve heard some version of this before, right? The girl’s a princess named Sen, her dad’s a dick who won’t let her leave, and he thinks he can offer her as marriage bait for some political alliance he needs. She’s locked away in this deathtrap of a fortress where she can’t get out and rescuers can’t get in. 

“Sen’s father spends all his time telling stories about how great his daughter is, how perfect she is for whomever he happens to be talking to at the time. Every now and then a suitor comes by and is allowed a brief visit inside the tower, and every time Sen rejects them. One day there’s this suitor named Prince Oscar – at least in the most popular version. I’ve also heard him called Tarkus, and my personal favorite version has the suitor as a woman disguising herself as a prince. 

“Anyway, at first this suitor seems just like any other and Sen is about ready to send him away. But then her dad gets called away and they actually have a moment to themselves, and the guy’s whole demeanor changes in an instant. He asks if Sen is really happy here and she confesses she’s miserable in this tower. So Oscar says she should pack her things, then when she’s ready she can hang a red cloth from her window and he’ll break her out that night. 

“When her father comes back, Sen says she’s rejecting this guy like all the rest, but really she’s taking the chance on him and she follows the plan. The prince was really a great knight in disguise and he breaks her out of the fortress, and they eventually marry anyway and live happily ever after. 

“It’s a simple enough story, but I just really relate, you know? Everyone knows me as someone completely different from who I actually am. Even if I’m not physically locked up, it feels like no one ever sees inside the tower, and even on the rare cases someone does it’s hard for me to be honest with them about the real me. When Sen finally has the courage to tell someone she’s unhappy, to me that reads like a coming out. I’m unhappy being the boy everyone’s told you about, I’d rather be someone else. 

“And all it takes is that one person who’s willing to listen, who actually cares enough to ask  _ her _ things instead of her father. That’s enough to bring her freedom, and then the whole world can see her for who she is. And it’s terrifying to open up like that to anyone, but it pays off in the end. Does that make sense? Sorry if I’m just rambling here, I just have a lot of feelings about this fairy tale.”

Nora was quick to reassure her friend. “It’s fine! That makes a lot of sense, actually. I just haven’t been able to think of that story in the same way for a while now. Would you believe it if I said it’s actually partly true?”

Natasha’s mind went blank with the shock of those words and she paused a moment, her mouth open but no words coming. “Um. What? I mean, all fairy tales have to start somewhere, I guess. Is there more? What are you talking about?”

“There really was a girl in a tower, only her name wasn’t Sen, it’s – sorry, Ren is glaring at me. Not over the phone, I know. I’m technically standing in a public space here even though there’s  _ nobody _ else around.” Nora sighed heavily. “We can tell you the real story when we visit. There are other fairy tales that are partly true too! Like the Tale of – hey! I’m not saying anyth – no don’t take the–”

“Hello, this is Lie again. I do apologize for the secrecy, but there’s a lot going on and this is much better said in person. It was great to catch up with you again, but we really should get back to our team. There is still an attack going on, after all. Take care. We’ll see you soon.”


	14. Cycle 15 part 2: What He Deserves

“He should be right up here.” Blake led her companions forward and pointed up at the building ahead. “High Leader, I'm sure you know how Adam fights. He’s fast and he’s strong, and anything he blocks can come back at you later. Amber, be very careful. Adam wants to kill me because I rejected him, and he wants to kill Sienna Khan for his future ambitions, but just because he doesn’t know you that doesn’t make you safe. You’ll be the only human here and he may target you purely for that.” 

“A good point,” Sienna remarked. “If Adam notices you’re human, he may try to turn the lights out on you. Will you be able to keep up if that happens?”

Amber smirked. “Joke’s on him then. My Semblance is light sensitivity. It gives me enhanced vision in low light or even enhanced contrast to see in fog. I can usually pick out people in camouflage too.” She shrugged and rubbed at the scars across half her face. “Doesn’t help against illusions projected straight into my head, though. And I sunburn easily.”

“Good. That’s one less thing to worry about. I’m not here to babysit some helpless human.” Sienna unwound the chain from her forearm and briefly inspected the small Dust darts on its end, then wound it loosely back again. 

Amber twirled her long staff. “I can pull my own weight. I know most Faunus get night vision for free, but I’ve never really been jealous about it. I don’t need a flashy Semblance. The Fall magic is more than enough.”

“Are we ready, then?” Blake held her weapon ready in the form of twin swords. “Yang will catch up to us soon. Every moment we wait, Adam can be killing more people.”

Two silent nods answered her. Blake gripped her blades tighter and led the trio onward at a light run, with Sienna’s six attendants following a short distance behind. There were cars parked on one side of the street only, cheery restaurants with outdoor seating on the other, and up ahead they could see the large plate glass window in the front of one of them was shattered. Directly across from it lay the body of a Huntsman – a human, blonde haired, face down with a rifle in his hand and a bloody stab through his torso. 

“He’s been here,” Blake said darkly. “Come on.”

“That wound looks too big for Adam’s sword.” Sienna knelt down by the Huntsman and inspected him for a moment, then stood again. “Definitely. You said he should be alone?”

“He was last time. I don’t know why that would change. What’s important is this time _ I’m _ not alone.” Blake ran ahead and called out the name of the man who she had once so admired. The man who had taken advantage of her innocence and her anger and manipulated her, isolated her from her family and the friends who had cared for her, who had tried so hard to keep her submissive and despite it all had _ failed. _ Blake had new friends now, a new relationship, a family that accepted her both in Menagerie and on her team, and _ he _ would never again stand in the way of any of it. 

“Adam!” She called again as she ran forward. At the end of this street should be the enclosed seating area shared by the surrounding establishments, where Blake had encountered her nemesis alone on this very same night two years before. She had not been back in all that time and seeing it again gave her pause, but the sight of her companions running beside her and the knowledge Yang was not too far behind pushed her onward. 

The building was not on fire in the far corner as it had been before – or at least, it was not on fire yet. Much of the vast window along the nearest side was broken and what remained near the door was shot through with cracks, and the door itself lay flat on the ground beside its frame. Something stirred within and Blake’s cat ears perked up, but movement from the doorway quickly left no doubt of the sound’s source. 

“Blake.” Adam stood in the empty doorframe and greeted her in a tone that almost suggested she was expected. Obviously he could retain no memory of a future in which he was dead, but even the first time around Adam had hardly been surprised at Blake’s appearance. “Have you come to join me in my hour of victory?”

Blake was far more surprised at Adam’s appearance. Instead of his usual black pants and jacket over a plain red shirt, he was decked out in shining silver from head to toe. Loose pants hung an inch too long and tucked into his polished metal boots. His arms were the same way, with long silver sleeves whose ends disappeared into armored gauntlets. And in a move Blake had never before seen, he even wore a plate helmet fastened to a pair of pauldrons so that even his head and neck were covered. Only his face was visible as the helm’s visor was flipped back, and his characteristic mask still covered his eyes as it had for so many years. 

“There will be no victory for you,” Blake challenged as she came to a stop a good ten feet from the door. “All you’ve brought to Vale tonight is death, and soon enough it will claim you too. I’m here to stop you. And I’m not alone.”

Adam finally seemed to register the presence of the others who had joined them, and his eyes flicked first to Amber and then back across to Sienna. “High Leader,” he said, with a slight nod of his head but not an ounce of respect further. “What are you doing here? Side by side with a _ human? _”

Sienna gestured to her attendants and they spread out in pairs, keeping watch in all directions in case Grimm were attracted to the conflict. She stepped up a pace in front of Blake and raised her voice toward Adam. “Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. Adam Taurus, you are to cease all activity in the Vale region and report back to High Command immediately for replacement. An indiscriminate assault of this scale is _ not _ what I sanctioned when I assigned you to the area. Some violence is necessary, yes, but a patient is cured by precise cuts of a scalpel, not by bludgeoning them over the head with a hammer. Our patient may be society and its illness prejudice, but the approach is exactly the same. Your actions are only making things worse for all of us.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, _ High Leader. _” Adam’s words carried a distinct flair of derision now. “You’re so caught up in avoiding an all-out war with humanity that you’ve forgotten… we have everything they do and more. When the war does come, the Faunus can win it. Particularly with the support of my new… business partners.”

“You don’t have Salem’s support anymore, Adam!” Blake shouted across at him. “She’s the one who told High Leader Khan what you’re doing tonight. Face it, Adam, your little attempt at a Fourth Crusade ends here.”

Blake raised her weapons and shifted her stance to a more ready position, but Adam remained deceptively relaxed and his face showed only disappointment. “Oh, Blake… why must you hurt me like this? Haven’t you any faith in your old friend? Was it not enough when you _ abandoned _ me, turned your back on your brothers in the White Fang…?” 

Blake gave him a ferocious glare. “That won’t work on me anymore, Adam. I don’t need you to give me purpose, or value. I _ never _ needed you. I have people who care about me now. I’m not alone anymore.”

“So you said…” Adam extended one arm behind him into the building, and waved for someone to come forward. “But I’m not alone either. I’ve found someone who does everything you can, and better.”

A woman stepped out from behind Adam to show herself in the broken window. In sharp contrast to Adam in his flat silver covering every inch of skin, she wore sparkly gold in a sleeveless V-neck dress, whose bottom edge barely reached her shins but which nevertheless sported a slit up one side almost to her waist. Complete with matching gold shoes and a pendant of seven large emeralds, she looked like she would be not at all out of place in a high-class Atlesian ball – except for the large and gleaming pair of beetle wings across her back, and the blood-soaked heavy blade in her hands. 

“Allow me to introduce Crown Princess Jade Goldwing, heiress to one of the most powerful Faunus clans of Anima.” 

Jade’s greatsword was a hulking blade of ivory white metal, bent forward a little in the middle, single edged with the dull back side lined with gold. It did not seem to be a trick weapon in the usual Huntress sense, unless the odd ring near the grip was some kind of magazine for bullets or Dust. “It’s so exciting to finally meet Blake Belladonna,” she said, hefting the blade a little higher. “Adam’s told me so much about you… And you too, Ms. Khan. Can’t say I’ve ever heard of this human, though.”

“My name is Amber. I’m used to being targeted by unscrupulous Huntresses by now. What’s one more? I’m not going to let either of you hurt my new friends.” Amber whipped up the bottom point of her staff and swept it across both Adam and Jade, and a powerful gust of wind burst from the white crystal to throw them both back deeper into the building. She charged forward, her eyes already lighting up with orange, leaving Blake and Sienna to share one last glance between them before following her into the fight. 

Amber crossed the threshold and swung her free hand in a wide arc, sending a semicircle of flame spreading out across the room. Adam unsheathed his sword halfway to block a section of it with the blade, while Jade leaped into the air and hovered a moment with fast-beating wings until it had passed by below. The light from the street lamps outside filtered in through the many windows to give the whole place a dim illumination, but Amber chose to activate her Semblance rather than struggle with less than perfect sight. 

Adam and Jade split to either side as she charged; Adam leftward toward the far side and the adjoining street, and Jade back toward the right wall where many of the tables from the middle of the room had been tossed and piled. Amber stopped in the middle and spun her staff rapidly, firing off blasts of flame and wind toward both of them while Blake and Sienna came in behind her. They too divided without a word, with Blake sprinting after her nemesis to leave his new accomplice for the White Fang leader to deal with. 

Sienna vaulted over a table and flew feet first toward Jade, unwrapping the chain from her arm as she moved. Jade brought up her greatsword and Sienna landed on the blade and pushed off again, and as she flipped higher she threw the chain down behind her to wrap it around the greatsword’s hilt. She yanked hard on the chain but Jade held tight to her weapon and so the force only pulled Sienna down faster, whipping the end of the chain back to her hand as she twisted around to land on her feet and free hand. 

“Not letting me have it easy, are you? Anyone Adam keeps close to him must be good.” Sienna gave a few words of respect to her opponent, but Jade only grinned and pressed her counterattack, forcing Sienna to duck and dodge. “So, Goldwing, was it? I’ve heard of your clan. Mostly because of your _ barbaric _ rituals of succession. What was it again, you put people in a circle and burn them alive to choose a leader?”

“That was ages ago.” Jade spun to block a swing of Sienna’s chain on the hard elytron carapace over her wings, then flipped them open briefly to throw the returning chain off course. “Each candidate would appoint a champion to stand in the Starfire Wheel, and we’d use mirrors and lenses to focus more and more sunlight down on them. They could step out at any time to save themselves, but the last one standing won victory for their lord. It was a wonderful system – anyone who could find someone willing to die for them was clearly an inspiring leader. And besides… it’s not like death by magnifying glass is anything unusual for insects.”

Sienna slid beneath a table and threw her chain toward Jade’s legs, and the firefly Faunus once again jumped to keep herself safe. She smashed her greatsword down on the table and cleaved through its wooden top with ease even though Sienna was long since past. Sienna took advantage of the recovery time after Jade’s swing to launch the endmost Dust dart from her chain, but instead of sticking between her wings as Sienna had intended, it glanced off to the side and its red cartridge exploded harmlessly on the floor. 

“Slippery, aren’t you?” Sienna pulled back her chain and reviewed the darts that remained. “So what happened with your man-sized bug zapper anyway?” 

“It fell out of use during the Great War, when we couldn’t afford to lose a single fighter or the whole clan might be overrun with Grimm. The leader at the time declared hereditary succession from then on, so my great-grandmother assassinated him and his son both.” Jade opened her elytra and swung an uppercut as she lifted off, and Sienna rolled to avoid it. 

Sienna took shelter on the far side of a table. It was no obstacle to the massive greatsword, but at least it would prevent Jade from dropping down onto her directly, and given their respective weapons Sienna knew she needed to stay at range to have an advantage. She whipped her chain up at her opponent’s legs and sent a wave rippling down its length before Jade had even begun to move, anticipating her dodge so that the chain’s bladed tip jerked to the side to follow her and struck the inside of her thigh. 

A brilliant green light flashed for an instant and Sienna stumbled back, blinking rapidly, and she missed catching the end of her chain when it returned. Jade laughed at her as she dropped back to the ground. “You like my Semblance? It’s a passive. I don’t even have to control it!”

“Feels like I just looked into a camera flash,” Sienna responded. “That happens every time you get hit? _ Damn, _ that’s going to be annoying.”

“That’s the idea!” Jade grinned and pressed her assault. “And the harder I’m hit, the brighter the light. Now let me just say, High Leader, it’s so nice of you to show up here tonight. Everyone will be so sad to hear how you were cruelly murdered by an opportunistic human Huntsman during the chaos. But don’t worry, your people will be in good hands…”

On the other side of the room, those good hands moved in a blur of red and silver as Adam turned away strikes from Blake and Amber both. Blake engaged him head on with sword and bladed sheath, making use of every minute of training she’d had in her extra two years in the future as she and Adam slowly circled each other, neither striking a hit on the other’s body. She and Yang had beat him once before, but it had taken everything they had to scrape a victory. With luck, their new allies could more than match this new accomplice he had brought. 

Of course, that was assuming they had Yang’s help, and she hadn’t yet arrived. She couldn’t be too far behind, right? All she had to do was resurrect her mother and make her way here, and she knew the way. Likely she would leave the Relic of Creation behind with Salem – not ideal, even though Salem so far had shown no signs of betrayal, but Yang would need both hands free. 

“Blake.” Adam’s voice snapped her out of her thoughts, cutting calmly through the flurry of blades. “I’m surprised. Has a year at Beacon really changed you so much?”

“I’m not the person you think I am,” Blake snarled back. 

“But of course you are. You’ll always be my Blake, my night flower… no matter how much you fight, or run away.” 

“I’m _ not _ running away.” 

Adam switched his grip suddenly to the other hand, and the reversal caught Blake off guard. Adam’s blade struck her flat across the stomach, and though her Aura protected her, the impact threw her back across the floor. The corner of Adam’s mouth curled up at her as she got to her feet again. “You will. Running away is all you know how to do! Everyone you meet, you hurt them and you leave!”

“Shut up!” Blake’s conviction held strong, but the all too familiar words struck deep within her psyche, dragging her back toward a time and a mindset she never wanted to enter again. Where was Yang? With Yang by her side to anchor her she could resist his words so easily. She was coming. She had to be. All Blake had to do was hold out until her partner arrived, and then they could take on Adam together. 

Amber stepped forward to take her place in front of Adam, diverting his attention away from manipulation as he was put on the defensive by powerful elemental attacks. Amber had dropped her staff in the middle of the room and approached with her hands empty, but both gave off a soft yellow-orange glow with wisps of color lifting from her forearms. 

Adam slashed downward at her and Amber merely raised a hand in response, and the red blade bounced off a shimmering shield in front of her palm. She brought up her other hand in a punch toward his stomach, her fist wreathed in flame which intensified as she moved, but at the last second Adam twisted to the side. A ball of fire shot forward across the room and splashed against the far window, rattling the glass in its frame but not quite cracking it. 

Amber let out a small burst of magic in all directions, careful not to reach Blake nearby, just enough to stagger Adam during his counterattack and give her time to readjust. Green light flashed from behind her and Amber could feel it burn against her skin, her sensitivity amplified by her own Semblance, the cost of being able to see clearly in this dim building. She twisted around to look toward the source of the flash and briefly made out the figures of Sienna and Jade fighting on the far end amidst haphazardly piled tables, but the momentary distraction left her open. 

Adam’s blade struck diagonally across her chest and threw her back, and Amber skidded across the hard floor and came to rest against a stack of chairs by the wall. She glanced around as she stood and was startled to see an extra person nearby — a Huntress with a lizard tail, dead, with her spiked gauntlets unbloodied. Like the body on the street outside, this one too had been stabbed clean through the torso. 

“Out of the way, Blake!” Rings of fiery energy swirled around Amber as she stalked forward to meet Adam again. Blake vanished in a poof of shadow cut by Adam’s blade and in an instant she reappeared a few feet to the side, guarding herself as she made a retreat. As soon as she was clear Amber sent out a volley of fireballs, fueling her power with the rage born of seeing another murder victim, spraying magic over a wide cone where Adam could not possibly avoid it all. 

The instant the flames dissipated, Amber followed up with a bolt of lightning from one palm. Adam’s sword was halfway out of its sheath before her hand was even fully raised, positioned perfectly in the path of her attack, and he blocked the bolt effortlessly with all its energy channeled into his Semblance. 

“Is that all you’ve got?” Adam taunted. 

Amber’s face contorted further with fury and she lifted a foot off the ground. “How many people have you murdered?” she screamed at him. “That one was even a Faunus! How does killing your own people get you equal rights?” The rings slowly turning around her shifted and aligned themselves into a concentric pattern in front of her, glowing brighter and brighter until their orange color was lost into white. A massive beam of magical energy shot forth along their axis, so wide and bright that Amber could not even see Adam’s body behind her own assault. She pushed her magic harder, willing more power into the beam, keeping it trained on her target until eventually he would have to be overwhelmed. 

“Amber, stop!” Blake yelled to her. “His Semblance stores incoming damage! You’re only giving him more power!” 

The beam shrank down again to reveal Adam still standing in the same spot, bracing himself with his sword out in front of him, pushing back against the magic’s force as he absorbed its energy into his sword. He returned the blade fully to its sheath and smirked at Amber. “Perhaps this human can be useful after all. So strong, and yet so _ easy _ to lead into a trap.” 

Amber took half a step back and her left hand raised almost by itself, brushing against the pale scars across much of her face. Adam advanced on her and she retreated further, wincing again as another green flash lit up the room. “Not the first time, is it? I can tell.” He lifted his red blade menacingly a few inches out from its sheath. “Got in over your head? Had to be rescued before you got worse than those scars?” Adam’s guesses were frighteningly accurate and he could read in Amber’s face that it was true. “Don’t worry… it won’t happen again. I’ll spare you from having to walk away from here with more.”

Another green flash and the sound of breaking glass drew his attention away, and Amber slipped off to the side where she was no longer in danger of being backed into a wall. She and Blake stared across the open space to see Jade picking herself up off the floor, with Sienna Khan nowhere to be found. Jade lifted her elytra and made a running leap with a brief flutter of her wings to glide out through the front window, the last vestiges of its plate glass now scattered on the street next to the broken pieces from before. 

Blake sprinted after her and vaulted over the low wall beneath the missing window. Amber followed, sparing only a single glance and a blast of frigid air for Adam as she ran for the empty doorframe. Outside, Jade blocked Blake’s bullets with the flat of her greatsword, while Sienna took advantage of her brief respite to pick the glass shards out of her clothes and attach more Dust darts to the end of her chain. 

“Why are you working with Adam?” Blake challenged. “How did he find you, so soon after I left him?” How had this person she’d never heard of inserted herself into the Fall of Beacon, when Blake knew she hadn’t been present the last time? 

“Lucky coincidence.” Jade grinned and intentionally let a bullet slip through her defense, and made a wide sweep forward while Blake recovered from the flash of light. “Adam and I happened to both be in Vacuo at the same time. I was there to collect a debt from one of the professors at Shade. Adam wanted to recruit Faunus students to be his agents there, and set up a future attack while he finalized the one at Beacon.” 

Closing the distance turned out to be a mistake, as Blake’s maneuverability let her slip behind Jade faster than she could bring her heavy sword around. She whirled around the other way and smacked Blake with her hard shell, then quickly closed it again to protect her wings. “There was this zebra girl who turned Adam down, but he asked about other Faunus and she mentioned meeting me in the halls the day before. So he tracked me down and we worked out a deal.” 

So it was Xuri’s fault Adam had a new ally. The Summer Maiden, who Salem had retroactively sent to train at Shade. The only change to the timeline that Blake knew of before the events of tonight, a single innocent choice rippling forward to make this day so much worse. But as much as she wished she might, Blake couldn’t find fault with Salem’s decision – she had been fulfilling a promise, and the effects four years later could not possibly have been predicted. 

There was a commotion from nearby as Adam exited the building and engaged Sienna directly. Amber looked back and forth between the two pairs each locked in close combat, and decided she would rather keep her focus on Adam instead of following Blake to a new target. She raised a hand toward the door and shot a compact fireball through at the chairs directly opposite the opening. The whole stack shattered into splinters and Amber waved them forward in a great cloud, each shard lighting on fire as they swirled close around her body. 

Amber threw out an arm toward Adam and the splinters followed her command. Seeing the flaming swarm heading her partner’s way, Jade broke away from Blake and ran to interpose herself in front of the attack. Her Aura let out a burst for each fragment individually, and though each green flash was dim from the small impact, the resulting strobe light wiped out any hope Amber had of maintaining concentration on her magic. The majority of the cloud fell out of the air harmlessly, except for a few splinters that landed on Sienna and even Amber herself. 

“You see what we could have been, Blake?” Adam called across the street to his former partner. “People who protect each other! But no, after everything I’d done for you, you had to go and _ abandon _ me! And if anyone else is ever unlucky enough to love you, you’ll just run away and hurt them too!”

“I’m _ never _ leaving her.” Blake immediately regretted her words. This Adam had not yet met Yang, had not yet realized she could be hurt to get at Blake. And now Blake had revealed her existence and her importance before she even arrived. 

Blake’s thoughts shifted as Jade returned to strike at her again. “You don’t have to be with him,” she pleaded. “You deserve better than Adam. I left him because he was abusive to me for years. Get out while you still can! Help us defeat him!”

Jade only laughed at her. “You think I don’t know him by now? That he’s controlling my every move? Anything Adam does to me I can give back twice as hard, whether it’s with blades or words or light. It’s who I am! Because unlike you, I’m not a pushover!” She kicked Blake back and took a swipe at Amber before returning to jeer her predecessor more. “Besides, my clan needs new leadership just as much as the White Fang does. Adam and I together can assassinate my father and then we’ll have a formal alliance – and with that kind of power, the war on humanity can begin! I’m with him because unlike you, I have ambition! I have goals and we’re already on the way to achieving them!”

“She’s right, Blake,” Adam chimed in. “What did you ever do except whine and worry? With Beacon crippled and Shade or Haven next, the humans will be weakened for years. There will be no new Huntsmen to stand in our way. And the Faunus can take our rightful place as the dominant species on the planet!”

“Adam, you fool!” Sienna Khan intensified her attacks on her lieutenant, but her chain whip was only minimally effective against a trained swordsman. “That’s not what the White Fang has ever stood for! The goal is to not have a dominant species at all!”

“And there will be no war,” Blake echoed. “This ends tonight.”

“This is only the end of the _ prologue _ of my legend! Tomorrow the real story begins: the story of me leading the White Fang to victory across all of Remnant! But you, Blake… you won’t be mentioned again. For your betrayal, your _ apostasy _ from the rightful cause… the judgement is death, and obscurity.” Adam strode out to the middle of the street and Sienna backed off at the sight of his strange new purpose, keeping guard instead from the side. 

Blake opened her mouth to argue with him further, but Adam cut her off. “Hush, my wilted love. As much as it pains me, if you will not repent and join me at my side again…” He stood up straighter, facing down Blake and Amber on the far side of the road as they too momentarily held their fire. “Jade!”

Jade backed away from Blake and came to stand near her partner. Adam drew his sword with a quick movement and the blade shimmered with red and black, filling the space six inches around it and a foot beyond the end. He held it down by his side, Semblance activated but not yet releasing his stored power, and with his other hand he reached up to his helmet. He flipped the visor down over his face and it was plainly seen that it had no eye holes, only flat mirrored silver to match the rest of his clothing and cover the final small area of exposed skin. 

Sienna was the first to realize his plan, and her eyes went wide as she yelled to her allies, “Take cover!” Without waiting to see their response, she whirled around and dove back through the broken window that Jade had thrown her out of before, and she lay flat along the wall in the shadow of the low barrier. Amber made a break for the door of the restaurant behind her, opposite Sienna’s hiding place, and gave a quick glance behind her as Adam raised his sword – and turned around before she had taken three steps. 

Blake was frozen in place. Adam was releasing his Semblance, and there was no way she would survive a hit from that much stored-up power. The wave of red he would let out was so wide, there was no guarantee she could dodge it, even with the help of her shadow clones. And if she was hit, her Aura would be broken completely – and no Aura meant no fuel for a Semblance, which meant no chance of avoiding a followup strike while she was vulnerable. 

And Yang was still not here. What could possibly be holding her up so long? Yang would be able to shield her. She could absorb much of the impact on her metal arm and the rest would strike her Aura, and for her that hit would only help her later. But she wasn’t here. Sienna Khan had vanished somewhere Blake couldn’t see her. Amber too was out of sight, behind her. Blake was alone, and all she could do was watch in what felt like slow motion as Adam brought up his charged blade toward Blake… and continued his movement to pass her by. 

Strong arms wrapped around her middle as Adam’s sword reached its peak. Blake heard her name called distantly by a woman’s voice – not Yang, no… it had to be Amber. The Maiden channeled all her strength to heave Blake up and to the side, arms lifting and legs pushing and core muscles twisting in unison, and though Blake was still frozen in fear she found herself flying through the air. 

She crashed through the plate glass window of the store behind and lay motionless, her mind still running slow as too many trains of thought competed for her attention. The words “Blake, stay down!” echoed in her ears and she vaguely acknowledged that yes, she was not going anywhere any time soon. Outside, Adam’s sword fell in an accelerating slash downward, releasing a single massively powerful strike not at her or Amber, but upon his own ally. 

And the world was lost in green. 

* * *

Yang ran. Away from the red portal closing behind her and the killing she had sanctioned, away from the mother who had never loved her and the ancient witch who inexplicably did. Toward Blake. Toward her girlfriend who was placing herself in the way of danger, with whom she had made a two-way vow of protection. 

This would be an entirely different kind of fight from her brief battle aboard Amity Colosseum earlier. Fighting Grimm was one thing. Fighting the man who had severed her arm and nearly severed her relationship… memories came flooding back and her left arm trembled for a moment until she forced it to be still. Her first encounter with Adam still stood more prominently in her mind than her second, reinforced by the months of reflection following it and the all too familiar surroundings which evoked the same old terror all over again. 

She needed to get to Blake. Nothing else mattered now, no concerns of Relics or the overarching eternal war. Only the woman she loved. Her vision seemed almost to blur and go dark around the sides, as she focused so intently on the dark street and the steady rhythm of her footsteps upon it. Was there something in the middle of the road up ahead? A human figure, gently drifting down from the sky? Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, inventing new threats out of pure stress and anticipation. Yang rubbed at her eyes as she ran forward, not even slowing her pace. 

A round barrier sprang up into her chest and face and Yang crashed headlong into it, only now finally coming to a halt. “Oh… not a hallucination then,” she muttered to herself. She blinked and rubbed her eyes again, and took a proper look at the person she had run into. “Sorry, I’m a little distracted, I need to… oh. You again.” 

She was greeted with only a curtsy and a twirl of the open parasol. “Neo…” Yang’s face flashed from confusion into annoyance. “Look, I don't want a fight here. I’ve got somewhere to be.”

Neo raised one eyebrow and collapsed her parasol to plant its tip into the street. Yang took a long step to the side, and Neo mirrored it to keep position directly in front of her. She stepped back the other way, and still Neo blocked her way. Yang rolled her eyes. “Really? You want a rematch? Didn’t you just fight some of my friends earlier?” 

Neo flipped her parasol up to rest its middle in her other hand, and the thin blade in its tip flicked out momentarily and then disappeared again. She shifted her weight to take a more ready stance, but Yang remained relaxed. “I don’t have time for this. Just get out of my way and we can both forget we ever saw each other.” 

The blade shot out of the parasol’s tip again, and stayed out. “Alright then,” Yang said, with a tired shake of her head. “How long has it been since we met on the train? A month or two? To me it’s felt more like two years, and I’ve gotten a lot stronger than I was back then. You’re not going to get another easy win.” She could tell Neo didn’t believe her. At least she might get the chance to practice her new Maiden powers now, before she needed them for real against Adam. 

But it couldn’t just be an extension of her usual fighting style, not here. Neo’s mastery of acrobatics and the manipulation of both her own and her enemies’ weights made her the perfect counter to slow heavy hitters like Yang. The Spring magic gave her nearly endless possibilities, and she would have to use it for something new. A style that was not her own but which she knew well, and knew would serve her better against her current opponent. 

Yang’s eyes glowed with pink and she stalked forward with her fists raised, and a thin layer of white flames rippled into being over the entire surface of her body. Neo took a step back, suddenly a little less confident in her challenge, but she remained ready and waiting for the first incoming strike. Yang led with a simple right hook toward Neo’s face and the smaller girl twisted at the waist to avoid it, leaning into Yang’s left shoulder so she could grab the extended arm and bend over to lever Yang’s weight over her back. 

But the instant her hands made contact, Yang vanished. Her wreath of flame remained behind and Neo stumbled through it, off balance, while Yang reappeared two feet to the side. She was almost as disoriented herself after the sudden jump, but recovered and threw another punch that Neo only barely blocked. A new outline of white flame shimmered over her body, readying the same trick again. 

She made an uppercut and Neo jumped sideways out of the way, and swung her closed parasol toward Yang’s stomach. Yang made no attempt to avoid it, only turning away to let it strike her in the side rather than head on, and she kept her balance easily without doubling over. She kept her momentum going and brought her arm around in a fast spinning attack, but Neo was already flipping back to escape her reach. At the last second Yang changed her approach and channeled all the magic built up around her into a white fireball on her fist. It streaked across the empty street and Neo whipped her parasol out in front of her, but she only managed to open it halfway before the burst of magic hit her and exploded on her chest. 

Neo flew ten feet back and Yang thrust both hands behind her to propel herself on her gauntlets’ recoil, flying forward and accumulating another coating of magic around herself as she traveled. Neo collapsed her parasol again and braced herself for impact, ready to redirect Yang’s momentum into a nearby car – but the attack never came. Yang disappeared again and her intangible clone of flame passed over Neo as it dissipated. Directly behind her in the intersection, Yang whirled around and sent out an arc of flame from one hand, burning Neo’s Aura further but also showing her where Yang stood. 

Neo took the offensive now and charged with her blade out, and motes of pinkish light condensed out of the air to form a pair of short glass swords in Yang’s hands. No sooner had the pair struck each other than they separated again, as a bright green strobe light from the cross street caused them both to fall back with a hand over their eyes. The rapid flashes ended as suddenly as they had come and Yang strained to see a small crowd of figures in the distance, but it was too dark to make out any more than their presence alone. 

She struck at Neo with her new blades, pressing ever forward to keep her opponent on the defensive. In a way her total lack of training was almost a benefit, as her strikes came randomly and were backed up with power alone rather than precision or skill. Neo fought back with both ends of her parasol and turned away most of the glass blades, but every time she came close to hitting Yang’s body rather than her swords, Yang teleported a few feet in a random direction and left only a burning outline behind. The pair circled each other and only very slowly whittled away at each other’s Auras, as Yang became more practiced at imitating her partner’s shadow clones and Neo learned better how to counter them. 

The pair separated and Yang discarded one of her blades, and with her free hand shot out several rapid bursts of magic energy. Neo stopped them with her open parasol and Yang took advantage of her blocked vision to try a different tactic. She stomped one foot and willed her magic into the pavement, and the road buckled upward in a traveling wave. Neo was bumped up into the air slightly as it passed beneath her, but she merely swung her parasol back behind her to roll its open surface over the ground and land back on her feet again. 

She stood up out of her assisted flip and rested with the parasol still open over her shoulder, her back to the other fight taking place four long blocks away. Neo and Yang stared at each other for a moment, each waiting for the other to make a move first, and after a short pause Yang realized she could use this time to gather a significant reservoir of magic at the ready. The white flames around her grew taller and took on a slight pinkish hue, and the air itself for eight inches around seemed to be distorted by the growing energy. 

Yang dropped her other sword and it shattered into motes of light again as it hit the pavement. The glow all around her grew stronger as she walked forward, a little slower than she needed to but vastly more threatening, and a circle of yellow formed between her hands. Still Neo waited, prepared to make a glass illusion of herself but not quite yet, not until Yang tried another surprise teleport before her attack. Whatever strange power this was, it had to run out eventually, right? If she could waste a powerful attack like the one aiming at her now, that would help take down this annoying girl who threatened Neo and her adopted father. 

A blinding green light flashed down the street from behind her, so bright even at this great distance that the parked cars to either side had their paint stripped and faded on the nearer side. Much of the blast was absorbed into Neo’s parasol, protecting her back and head and much of Yang as well in its shadow, but the back of Neo’s legs took the full force of it. Her Aura remained up but with barely a quarter of its previous strength, and she fell to her hands and knees. 

Yang fared little better, as her legs too were burned by the intense green light. She dropped to her knees as well and a wide beam of yellow sunlight shot up into the dark sky, missing Neo by a huge margin. 

“What the hell is going on over there?” she asked aloud. She stood up and rubbed at her injured shins for a moment, then finally looked back at her opponent. “Um, Neo… your umbrella is on fire.” 

Neo scrambled to grab the handle of her parasol again from where she had dropped it, and she flipped a switch on the shaft to pull the entire long blade out from the rest of the weapon. She shoved the rest aside, the lace on top already half burned away with only a skeleton left behind, and struggled to stand on wobbly legs. Before she could regain her footing Yang rushed forward and tackled her, and the blade was knocked from Neo’s hand again as both girls fell to the ground. 

Yang rested most of her weight on her hands, pinning Neo’s shoulders to the street. Neo kicked at her and strained up to bite her wrists, but Yang only leaned on her more and brought up one knee to press into her stomach. She lifted one hand and pink motes swirled around it, and a moment later a glass dagger was held tight at Neo’s neck. 

“You were going to kill me on the train,” Yang said. It was not a question. “I was down. I was no threat to you or anyone.” 

Neo frowned and made her best attempt at a shrug, but faced with Yang’s furious glare her expression changed to a nervous half-grin and she pulled both hands up to rest palms up by her shoulders. Her gesture of surrender was received with a nod, and she slowly moved one hand to her face as nonthreateningly as she could, and flicked one finger out from the corner of each eye. 

“This?” Yang asked, raising the knife away from Neo’s throat for a moment to indicate the pink flares around her own eyes. “Turns out magic is real, and I’m one of only six people in all of Remnant who can use it. This was actually my first time. Imagine if I had some practice.” 

Neo looked skeptical, but impressed. There was no denying Yang today had some kind of power she had not yet awoken when they met before. She lifted her hand over her head and felt around in a small arc, as if tracing out an object. 

“A hat?” Neo nodded and ran one finger in a long straight line with a hook at the end, and then clasped her hand around the air. “Ohh… hat and cane, you mean Roman Torchwick. You got separated from him. Last I heard, he was shot in the leg, and there’s still a lot of Grimm out there. I wouldn’t expect to see him again.” 

A look of horror crossed Neo’s face and her mismatched eyes sparkled as tears welled up but did not quite fall. Yang stared back unblinking as Neo went limp beneath her, but after only a few seconds she had to look away from the pain that greeted her. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when they reopened the pink glow around them was gone, and the magical dagger dissolved into fading points of light once again. 

“You don’t do well without him, do you?” she asked softly. “I remember how bedraggled you looked in Atlas. Living alone for years, on the run from three different kingdoms’ police… teaming up with the devil herself to get revenge on someone who wasn’t even responsible.” Neo’s brows furrowed in confusion, but Yang continued despite knowing her experiences were not shared. “I don’t know what happened to you after Cinder died, but I can’t imagine you could live well in Atlas. You’re a getaway driver with no one to drive, and doing any sort of crime has got to be harder there than in Vale.”

Yang shifted her weight off of Neo’s body and reached over to pick up the narrow sword nearby. “But now Cinder’s already dead so she can’t take advantage of you again, and you _ know _ my sister didn’t kill Torchwick. She wasn’t even there this time.” Yang stood, and leaned back down to offer her free hand to Neo. “No one deserves to be homeless and hungry, no matter what your background. If you ever want to turn your life around, you can come to me and my friends for help.”

Neo still looked skeptical, and she remained lying where she was. “You wouldn’t be the first person who’s tried to kill me and later became a new friend,” Yang offered. She glanced up as a crack of thunder came from down the street where Blake and the others fought. “What are they doing… Come on now, up with you!” Finally Neo reached out and Yang clasped her hand tightly to pull her to her feet. Another pair of thunderclaps sounded in the distance as Yang pressed the handle of Neo’s sword back into her grip. “You could be a Huntress easily, you know. You could pass the exams without ever setting foot in a classroom.”

Neo took a step back from Yang and curtsied, but before she could turn and go Yang pulled out her scroll. “Wait. Take my number. I don’t think you’re going to find Torchwick again, and when you don’t you’ll need someplace to go. And besides, over text maybe we can actually _ talk. _” Neo retrieved her scroll as well and the pair exchanged contacts, as down the street more arcs of lightning could be seen, with low booms following about a second later. 

“They’ve definitely started without me. I’d have been there by now if I hadn’t been held up. Sorry, got to run.” Yang pocketed her scroll again. Neo held hers up in two fingers and gave her a pointed nod, and the two of them separated and ran in opposite directions down the long street. 

* * *

Everything was burning. 

Blake blinked rapidly and rubbed at her eyes, shaking off the paralyzing fog in her brain now that Adam and his overcharged sword were out of sight. She was laying on a tiled floor – where? Why? Amber had thrown her into a building. She was alive and her Aura felt strong, so the immediate threat must be past – but what had happened? Why was the ceiling of this restaurant shrouded in smoke, and illuminated by flaming wall hangings to all sides? 

Blake sat up and pulled herself up by the low windowsill to take her feet. Her whole body felt like it was burning as well, but when she looked down at herself everything appeared fine. She put her hands to her eyes again, but the pain around them would not be rubbed away. 

Outside it was much the same. Everything that could possibly catch on fire was already burning, and everything that could not had been scoured clean and bleached by unimaginably bright light. Across the street Sienna Khan stood in the opposite window, almost as stunned as Blake herself at the development, and she quickly climbed out onto the street to escape the room full of burning tables and burning chairs and burning wooden floor and walls. 

In the center of the road, Adam was leaning over, pushing the heavy mirrored helmet and pauldrons off over his head to clang on the ground. The combination of his Semblance with Jade’s had wreaked devastation for hundreds of feet around, with lesser effects as far as there was line of sight, but now his partner’s Aura was fully depleted and no more green light would flash along these streets. Jade leaned on her greatsword, laughing maniacally until she was overcome with a fit of coughing and clutched a hand to her side, then caught her breath and began laughing again. 

“That was a big one!” she exclaimed, and clapped a hand to Adam’s shoulder. “Even for us. You must have absorbed a lot of power from that weird human girl.” 

“The most dangerous foes are always the most helpful,” Adam said. “We turn their own strength back against them. With our Semblances and with the White Fang. The more humanity hates us the more power we have over them. And this is one human, at least, we don’t have to worry about anymore.” 

Blake stepped through the shattered window and called out to her enemies. “What did you do to Amber? Where is she?” 

Jade pointed behind Blake at the narrow stretch of wall separating the plate glass window from the door. “Right there!” she yelled back, and collapsed into another fit of giggles. A shadow lay across the bricks, a human outline framing a region of normal red, outside it bleached pinkish white, showing exactly where Amber’s body had blocked the light from reaching it. But there was no sign of Amber herself, not even a charred body at the base of the wall. Only her shadow remained, as a testament to the killing light. 

“You _ murderers! _” Blake screamed, and a sudden gust of wind buffeted Adam and Jade and stirred up a light dusting of ash from the street. 

“It’s nothing new,” Adam responded. “How many have _ you _ killed on all our missions together? Besides… she was only a _ human. _” He looked to Jade as he put a hand back on his blade. “One out of three isn’t bad. I can take care of the rest.” 

If Amber was truly gone… if she had given her life saving Blake, with the young Faunus in her final thoughts… oh. _ That’s _ why Blake felt like her eyes were on fire. She looked down at her hands and the black swords she held, back up to Adam for a moment, then sheathed her blade and cast the whole thing down by her side. She clenched her hands into fists and took in a deep breath. “You’ll pay for that, Adam. Both of you will.” 

Adam gave a short bark of a laugh. “Without your weapon? Are you _ trying _ to follow that idiot human now?”

“I am her successor, though I never asked for it. Her magic is mine.” Blake’s eyes flared brighter with their orange glow and her fists took on a coating of flame. “That’s the one thing your hate can never kill.” 

For a brief moment the air seemed to shimmer around Blake as power gathered within her body, and then she flashed forward to punch Adam with all her might, moving faster than the eye could see with a bolt of lightning connecting her new position to a shadow clone left behind. Thunder cracked instantaneously and Adam was hurled backward with the force of her strike, skidding back into the outer wall of the communal seating area. The narrow mask flew off his face and disappeared through the window, lost amidst the burning tables and chairs. 

Sienna Khan jumped out of the way of Adam’s flight and slowly took a few steps back along the wall. She watched in silent wonder as Blake pivoted and threw a flaming punch toward Jade, who blocked it with the flat of her greatsword but still stumbled back under the impact. Sienna’s chain dangled loosely across both hands, a full complement of darts ready at its end, but she was reluctant to place herself anywhere near the raging Blake. She cautiously retreated a few steps further, still in shock over the sudden changes, content for now to watch the newest Maiden work. 

“Adam, this is all yours!” Jade called to her partner. “I need to recharge!” 

Adam recovered from Blake’s initial charge and launched a vicious counterattack. No longer weighed down by his mirrored armor, he was free to duck and dodge all manner of magical attacks and he kept Blake on her toes with relentless slashes of his Dust-infused blade. Blake vanished from beneath his sword over and over with only shadows taking the hit instead, until finally she flashed away with another horizontal bolt of lightning to throw a spray of icy spears at him from afar. 

Nearby, Jade took one last look around the battlefield, and ran. Sienna startled at the movement and ran after her, but slowed as Jade lifted her elytra up and spread the delicate wings underneath. Sienna whipped her chain up and threw the endmost dart, a little triangle of metal with a piece of ice Dust embedded in its center, but she overestimated Jade’s rate of ascent and the shot went wide over the firefly Faunus’s shoulder. 

Blake stomped the ground and a net of golden energy exploded out from her foot and spread as an expanding dome around her. Adam brought up his sword to block the frontmost strands, but the net was so densely packed that others managed to bypass it and clip both his sides. He staggered back, and Blake disengaged for a moment to focus on her other target. 

Lightning flashed diagonally upward and suddenly Blake was in the air, wrapping her arms around Jade from behind to stifle the beating wings, and both plummeted together back to the asphalt below. Neither had even picked themselves up yet when Blake teleported again, leaving shadow copies of both women behind as a bolt of lightning carried them back to the fight. Blake hurled Jade forward as she came out of the blink and rolled to quickly regain her footing, already turning away as Jade’s sword twisted out of her grip and she tumbled to land at Sienna’s feet. 

Sienna finally leapt back into action, dropping with her chain extended to wrestle Jade away from where Blake was confronting Adam again. She slipped the chain beneath one elytron before it closed over Jade’s wings, hobbling her movement so Sienna could haul her away like a tiger with its prey. 

During his brief free moment while Blake was away from him, Adam put a hand to his face. His head felt a little lighter, his vision seemed clearer – his mask was missing. And that meant everyone could see his shame, the mark he had kept hidden for years, even from his closest companions. “People have hurt me before, Blake,” he said. “All sorts of people in all sorts of ways. But none hurt me quite like y–”

“Oh, spare me. I’ve heard it all before.” Blake rolled her eyes. “I know the SDC branded you. Jacques Schnee is on my list too, his name right after yours.” She punched forward at the air and released seeking fireballs from each fist, but Adam merely blocked them with his sword. 

“And yet you fight _ against _ the ones who can tear down his tyranny? Making alliances with _ humans? _ The scars you gave me may not show, but you’re no better than him!” Adam activated his Semblance again with its moderate amount of stored damage, and red and black outlines flickered over his body and sword as he made a wide horizontal swing. 

Blake zapped forward directly through Adam to the other side. The shadow clone she left behind was cut straight through by the wave, but the arc of lightning between it and Blake pierced through the center of Adam’s body and burned him from both sides. Farther away the wave from his charged blade passed harmlessly over top of Sienna and Jade and cut a channel into the brick wall behind. 

Two more solid punches struck Adam as he turned around, first in his side beneath his ribs and then another on his chin. Adam grunted in pain but managed not to fall back, but the counterattacks he launched hit only air. Fireballs rained down on him from above and he blocked what he could, but even his incredible speed and precision could not match the sheer volume of magic Blake was throwing at him. 

The beginning of a cry for help sounded behind him and was quickly stifled. Sienna’s chain now looped around Jade’s neck, and she pulled hard with one knee pressed into Jade’s back. Adam whirled around and used his Semblance again, even with only a few attacks stored since the last time, aiming a cutting slash toward the length of chain that bound the two together. But before he could release the captured energy, Blake dropped from her hovering position and slammed a flaming fist down onto his shoulder. Adam lurched to the side and his red wave cut a groove into the pavement behind Sienna’s back. 

Blake grabbed Adam’s sword arm with both hands and yanked him off balance, then teleported a short distance away. Motes of orange light swirled around her arms and formed into thick glass bracers, complete with glass gloves over her hands. She could tell Adam’s Aura was running low – he was releasing his Semblance too frequently now, sending energy back as fast as he took it in as if afraid he might lose a charge. And if Blake was already performing her partner’s role in battle, she would simply have to finish it the same way. 

Blake waited at a slight distance for Adam to come to her. Not too close so she would have time to react, not so far that Adam might do something unexpected. A stance relaxed enough to invite an attack, but not so calm to suggest a trap. Blake remembered that day by the waterfall so clearly, but Adam would have no idea. Though she was still facing him alone, all the paralyzing fear had melted away. She knew Yang was coming, and knew what Yang would do if she were here. And all of Adam’s cunning words could never break that faith. 

Adam lunged forward and brought his blade up in an ascending cut toward Blake’s chest. Not the opening he was meant to give, but it would be sufficient. Blake stood her ground and placed her armored forearm across her stomach, and the red sword clinked against an inch of solid glass. Her other hand snapped up to grab it by the blade near the hilt, protected as well by a thick coating of glass, and the moment Adam’s sword was solidly in her grip – she vanished. 

A bolt of lightning cracked straight through Adam’s body once again and Blake appeared at the other end, still holding the red sword tight. Sienna looked up from an increasingly limp Jade and covered her cat ears, but it was too late for the loud boom of thunder and no further noises came. The glass armor over Blake’s arms and hands dissolved and she flipped the sword’s handle into her grip, already starting to look back toward her foe. Faint red light flickered across Adam’s body as he looked down at his empty hands, and he and Blake both turned in unison to face each other again.

Blake swung the stolen sword as she moved, a high horizontal slash with the full force of her body behind it. Adam’s head jerked back and his one good eye opened wide, and his hands flew up as if in one final, fruitless gesture of surrender. There was not a moment’s hesitation from Blake as she continued her strike directly into the side of his neck, and all the way through. 

Adam’s body slumped forward at her feet and Blake watched it fall, the orange rims around her eyes already fading out as her battle finally ended. She turned around to Sienna and asked, “You done there?” 

Sienna let go of both ends of her chain and Jade too dropped facedown on the street. “Yep. Assassin number two has been dealt with.” She unwound the chain from Jade’s neck and disconnected the darts from its end, stabbed a fire dart into Jade’s shoulder with her hand, and when she got no reaction she wrapped the chain back over her forearm and stood up. “That was a real pain. I’m a lot better against robots than Huntsmen. Give me a moment here, I’ll be right back.” 

Sienna jogged down to the corner and looked both ways on the cross street. “Hey, you two! Back to me!” She waved to one side and then returned to Blake, now with a pair of attendants following. “Looks like only two of the six guards I brought survived Jade’s light, but two is better than none. Did you have to deal with any Grimm?”

“Only a single beowulf lost from its pack,” one responded. “Honestly, I expected more.” 

“Ruby’s been busy,” Blake said, without explanation. She picked up Adam’s head from where it lay beside his body, holding it by the bright red hair on top, and she jabbed the sword she still held up through his severed neck to the top of his skull. “Now you, High Leader,” she said, shoving the gruesome trophy toward Sienna, “Take this. And take the White Fang back.” 

“You know, Blake…” Sienna took the sword’s handle and grimaced. “I never knew you had that in you. Maybe I’ve underestimated the Belladonnas.” 

“Really? Maybe you should tell that to my father.” Blake snorted and looked away, looking back for where she had dropped her own weapon, but a new sight greeted her as she turned around. A sight so long awaited. “Yang!”

Yang skidded to a stop and collapsed into Blake’s arms. She wrapped her partner in a tight embrace and closed her eyes as she pulled her tighter, but had to pull away to pant for breath after her long run. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, and paused to breathe deeply again. “I’m smarter than I was at Beacon, but I’m not faster. You really took down Adam without me? You… cut his head off?” 

“With his own sword. I left mine over here.” Blake walked over to pick up her sheathed blade from the street. “I know you just got here but we should really head out soon. This fire is getting worse. But you can go stab him in the back again if you want.” She offered the black sword to Yang, who merely laughed and shook her head. 

“Wow, good job. Who’s this here with the wings?” Yang pointed down at Jade, then looked all around. “And where’s Amber?” 

An uncomfortable silence fell over the group and Blake moved closer to put a hand on Yang’s shoulder. She sighed and briefly searched for better words to express herself, but finally just came out with it directly. “Amber is gone. She died saving me. From _ her. _” Blake sneered at the body before her. 

“What? That’s horrible. I mean, I’m glad you're okay, but…”

“Yang, you don’t understand. _ Amber’s final thoughts were about me. _” Blake cupped Yang’s face in one hand and brought her around to stare into her orange-rimmed eyes. “I’m the new Fall Maiden.” 

“Excuse me,” Sienna interjected, “but what exactly are these Maidens? Magic people, clearly, but how does it work?” 

“There’s four of them, named for the seasons, and when one dies her powers transfer to whoever was in her dying thoughts,” Yang explained. “My mother was Spring before me, and Amber was Fall. You met Winter earlier, and Salem is… she’s a bit of a special case.” 

“I see. Well, I’ll leave you to it. I have a rogue faction to reclaim.” Sienna rewound her chain over her left palm and used it as a guard so she could heft the skewered head in both hands. “If you see Salem again, give her my thanks for the warning.” Sienna left at a light run, with her two surviving guards in her wake. 

Something cracked deep within the neighboring building and there was a rumble of falling wood and metal as half of the upper floor collapsed into the lower. Hot air rushed out from the windows and door over Yang and Blake, and the wind only fanned the smaller flames across the street. 

“We need to get out of here,” Yang called, and grabbed Blake’s arm to lead her away. “I’m going to call emergency services too, though I’m sure they’ve got their hands full. Let’s see, we’re on third avenue south and… does that say Matalil?” Yang pulled out her scroll and dialed the kingdom-wide emergency number. An operator picked up immediately despite the chaos across Vale, and Yang identified herself as a Huntress and warned of the outbreak of fire at their location, as well as the two bodies they had left in the street. 

“All done?” Blake asked, as Yang returned her scroll to her pocket. “Salem wants both of us back with her. Apparently the message came in while I was fighting. Something about the Summer Maiden. I guess you know the way since, you know, you were just here.” 

Yang chuckled and squeezed Blake’s hand. “Yep. Sorry again I wasn’t there with you. I got held up by _ Neo _, of all people.” 

“What did she want?”

“What do you think?” Yang shrugged. “She tried to fight me again, but with the Spring Maiden magic I overpowered her easily. I offered her help, if she’s willing to accept it.” 

“You… what?”

Yang slowed so she could bring out her scroll again, and showed Blake the new contact she now had. “You remember how bad she looked in Atlas. Torchwick’s as good as gone again, and this time she won’t even have Cinder to latch onto. So… I figured I’d try to convert her. If she doesn’t want to be alone on the streets again, then she can come to us, agree to not commit a felony every other week, and become a new friend.” 

Blake nodded approvingly. “Alright, well, we’ll see what happens.” 

“Yeah… I gave her the option, now it’s up to her to take it. I was just thinking, well, if Salem can change for the better, anyone can.” Yang paused a moment, and frowned. “Except Adam. You have to choose it, and he never would.” 

* * *

“You wanted to talk to me again?” Salem held her scroll up between two fingers for a moment, then slid it closed and absently turned it over in her hands. 

“Yes, I, um...” Xuri glanced around as she struggled to find words to express what she needed to say. “I want clarification on...” She paused again, and sighed. “I think Professor Ozpin might be lying to me.”

Salem laughed. “I bet he is! What is it this time?”

“I mean, he could just be misinformed, at worst a little misguided...” Xuri was hesitant to place too much blame on the man she’d known closely for four years, though her initial suggestion had been received with surprising enthusiasm. She vanished a moment, and continued once she returned. “I talked to him again just now, and he said some things that just can’t be right. I asked him about you, and none of it made any sense.”

Salem’s eyes narrowed suddenly. “You didn’t tell him we met, did you?” 

“No. With what he was saying, I figured it was better not to. He said you were part Grimm and would destroy anyone in your way just like a Grimm would. If you saw this sword, you’d kill me and take it without hesitation. But you’d already seen the Relic, I even _ gave _ it to you before I knew who you were, and then you gave it back again and left. So now I’m just wondering… how much else was he wrong about?”

Salem waved the scepter she held and conjured comfortable chairs for herself and Xuri, as well as an extra two next to them. The pair were in the middle of a residential street and the body of Raven Branwen could still be seen farther down the way, but the sudden appearance of some armchairs was simply something the locals could puzzle over when the attack was over and the sun came up. 

“Take a seat. There’s a lot you need to know as the Summer Maiden, and I doubt old Oz has said much of anything. But since we do still have a bit of time pressure here, how about you just tell me what he’s told you, and I’ll point out all the spots that aren’t quite true. Yang and Blake ought to be here soon enough, and they worked with Oz for years. They can confirm everything, and you should probably trust them more than me anyway.” 

“Um... okay.” Xuri swallowed hard and frowned as she thought back on her most recent meeting with Ozpin. “He told me some history just a little while ago. That Remnant was created by two gods, and you stole their power and fought them and–”

“Hold up.” Salem lifted a hand and Xuri fell silent, and vanished for just a second once again. “The world was created by two gods, yes. The Brothers of Light and Darkness. That much is just like the fairy tale you know. But he told you I _ stole _ my immortality?” Salem gave her an incredulous look. “The gods _ cursed _ me with immortality, because my husband had died and I got so mad about it that I demanded they bring him back for me.” 

“They made you immortal… just to keep you and him apart forever? Wouldn’t saying ‘no, we won’t bring him back’ be enough?” 

“You would think so. But… that’s the gods for you. They’ve never really been the type for reasonable responses to things.” Salem leaned back in her seat and placed her hands behind her head. “But go on. What else did he tell you?”

“You fought the gods, and they left Remnant to keep it from being destroyed in the crossfire.” Xuri pointed up at the broken moon. “That’s how the moon got like that.”

A wide smile grew across Salem’s face. “The gods left to protect Remnant?” Finally she could not contain her laughter any longer and she had to pause as the fit overcame her. “I did lead an army against the Brothers, but they destroyed it in seconds. You can’t fight the gods! And you know what they did next?”

Xuri shook her head silently. 

“It wasn’t enough just to defeat us. They had to _ punish _ us. Because much like when they made me immortal… they’re just not very good at sensible, proportionate solutions. The gods killed _ everyone _. And I don’t just mean in my army. Every last person on the planet was wiped out. Except for me, of course, because they still refused to let me die. And the moon?” Salem stared up at the night sky. “They did that on purpose. The two of them threw a temper tantrum and trashed their own creation just because some people dared to stand up to them for once, and the Brother of Darkness blew a hole in the moon on his way out.” 

“So… how did things ever get back to normal after that?” Xuri suddenly broke eye contact and pointed down the street. “Wait, are those the people you said were coming?” 

Two girls walked briskly toward them, hand in hand, and Salem waved them over to take the empty seats. “Yang, Blake, meet the Summer Maiden Xuri… again. Except really for the first time, because your other meeting never happened now.” Xuri stood to shake both their hands, blinked out for just an instant, and then all three seated themselves. “I was just telling Xuri the history that Oz never did. You know, how the gods destroyed all of humanity and abandoned their planet.”

“Oh, perfect,” Yang jumped in. “There’s a spot just after that which Jinn left out of her story to us, so maybe you can help. In the First Age there were only humans, but when Ozma was sent back there were both humans and Faunus. How did that get started?” 

Salem dropped her face into her hands. “I am so sorry,” she said, and then looked back up at Yang. “That’s the one thing I don’t know. I completely missed that whole section of history.” Salem pursed her lips and shrugged. “After the apocalypse, there was a good five hundred years or so when I wandered around coming up with every way imaginable to kill myself. Literally, every way I imagined, I tried. None of them worked. Somehow humanity returned to the world while I was gone, and the Faunus with them. 

“I had no idea until my wanderings brought me to a human village. I thought I was still alone in the world, because for a long time I had been. Of course, by that time I’d already tried the idea of ‘jump into a lake of Grimm liquid’ and lived. I was half Grimm myself and I looked the part, plus I was using magic when no one else had any. They cast me out and called me a witch – and they were right, but they didn’t have to be so rude about it. I wandered more, found some Faunus, and they were nicer. They knew what it was like to be cast out. They were still terrified of me though, so I remained on my own until Ozma found me.” 

Salem waved a hand toward Yang and Blake. “Speaking of which… tell Xuri about your adventures with Oz. What it was like to work with him for so long on such an important mission. Xuri is afraid Oz might be lying to her, and you two can tell her about him from a more similar perspective than I could.” 

Yang rested her elbows on her knees and leaned forward to stare across the group at Xuri. “I don’t know what he’s said to you, but I can _ guarantee _ he is lying. Even when he pretends to give in and tell the truth, the whole truth this time, nothing being held back anymore… he never does. It took the Relic of Knowledge to get the full truth and there was _ so much _ he’d left out.” 

“Back up a little, Yang,” Blake said. “We look like first year Beacon students. We’re actually two years older and have jumped back in time with the Relic of Choice. In our timeline, Beacon was destroyed tonight. You weren’t here, Salem was evil, Amber died and gave her powers to Cinder… Nobody was prepared for the scale of this attack. One of our teammates died. Ozpin died. We scattered around the world. Eventually we all made our way to Haven just in time for the next attack there, which we managed to stop. We got the Relic of Knowledge there. By that time Ozpin had told us about the Maidens and that the Relics existed, and about his own reincarnation, but nothing about the history of it all or what the Relics did or what happens if you collect all four.” 

Those last words made Xuri perk up instantly. “What _ does _ happen? Professor Ozpin says he wants to bring the four together today. He went all around the world just now trying to get them and was really angry when he couldn’t.” 

“He wants to do it _ now?! _” Salem practically shouted as she jumped up from her chair, and she waved her arms all around. “In the middle of all this?!” She stopped with an almost stunned expression on her face, and slowly sank back into her seat. She leaned back and spoke up to the sky, more to herself than any of the people around her. “He’s even crazier than I thought. I’ve done too much again.” 

“He said it calls the gods back here, or something? And they’ll live on Remnant among us?” 

“That’s one possibility, yes.” Yang rolled her eyes. “It sounds like he’s told you a half-truth, as he so often does. The gods will be called back to Remnant and they will judge humanity. Either they stay and live here again, _ or… _ they wipe the entire world from existence. Which one we get depends on whether humanity is united in peace, which, clearly at the moment we’re not.” 

“The God of Light never mentioned the Faunus in what Jinn showed us,” Blake added. “But presumably everyone has to be united, not just humanity.”

“You see now why it’s so important that the judgement never comes.” Salem turned the Relic of Creation over in her hands as she spoke. “Neither of the outcomes is good. This is why for thousands of years, I have focused my efforts to keep people divided, to make sure world peace was never achieved. I am responsible for more evil than most people can even imagine, all to stop Ozpin from uniting the Relics. I will do _ anything _ to make sure that doesn’t happen.” 

Xuri looked at her with apprehension. “So some of what he said about you is true. Or was true. What changed?”

“One, I finally got a few Relics away from his reach. And two…” Salem looked over at Yang again and smiled. “I met someone who beat some sense into me about how much damage I was really doing to the world, and I realized I didn’t really need to anymore. Now, I don’t _ think _Ozpin can steal the Relics back from me. But if he’s going to try…”

“He is. He told me he was going to take them by force and he expects me to help. But knowing what I do now, I don’t think I want to help him anymore.” Xuri blinked out and returned, continuing her train of thought despite Yang and Blake’s confusion at the repeated occurrence. “He’s repeatedly said he would prefer oblivion to a world ruled by you, as if those are the only two options. I think there was something about turning back time a small amount and then uniting the Relics? But if he’s saying things like that I’m worried he might just destroy the world immediately if he gets them all. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know to stop that happening.” 

“I don’t know about fighting Ozpin,” Yang said. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really like him that much. My opinion of Oz has been steadily declining for quite a long time now, and there have been plenty of moments when I’ve wanted to beat him up. But I don’t want to kill him. If only to spare Oscar or whoever comes next from having him in their head.” 

“And besides,” Blake interjected, “isn’t this Ozpin the one we knew at Beacon? He had only just started hinting the most basic things to Pyrrha when the Fall of Beacon happened. It’s hard to believe he’d go off the rails that much, this early.” 

Salem let out a heavy sigh and looked down at her lap. “I… have a confession to make.” All heads turned to look at her. “This is not the native Ozpin to this timeline. Not the one Xuri has known since her days at Shade. He's from your timeline,” she said, finally looking up again toward Yang and Blake. “I included him in the jump back with us.” 

“Which means…”

“That just as he said, he’s decided to be both quick and bold. He wants the opposite of what I do, no matter what that may be.” 

“Why would you do that? And not tell any of us?” Yang’s words cut bitterly through the brief silence over the group, and Salem cringed. “You’ve been very open about history and magic and your own intentions and that’s refreshing after spending so long with Ozpin, but leaving out critical information like that is not the way to become a better person.” 

“I’m sorry.” Salem couldn’t quite meet Yang’s stare. “Because of who I am, I necessarily have to think long term. Ozpin and I are both here forever, and we’ve been in a stalemate for millennia. I wasn’t able to capture a Relic, he wasn’t able to achieve world peace. Now that things have finally started changing in my favor, he is determined to push me back into my old, violent ways. It’s become more and more clear over the centuries that he _ wants _ me to be a great evil in the world, he _ needs _ it to justify his own ineffectiveness as a leader. If I stop opposing peace, he loses that. 

“All of his control, all of his influence over people, is built on the fear of me,” Salem continued. “He shrugs off any responsibility of his own and stumbles along, just barely coasting by on the stroke of luck he had ages ago, finding the Relic of Knowledge before I did and thereby seizing all the others. He made me into the destructive force I was, against my will. He needs that to stay the case. So the moment your team set aside your fear of me and decided to help, his control was gone and you became worthless to him. And within minutes, he abandoned you. 

“Remember that this Ozpin was from two jumps before your native timeline. This is the Oz who experienced _ two _ massively destructive attacks on Vale, and watched me erase one of them from history. I predicted that undoing the other, tonight – undoing _ both _ of my biggest assaults on peace of the last decade, and further renouncing my villainous role – would drive him mad and lead him to make long-lasting mistakes. This is why I included him in our travel back in time. Unfortunately, it seems I was more right than I really wanted. Ozpin _ has _ gone mad, in the worst possible way. He is threatening the world’s existence, and that’s something even his former allies have to oppose.” 

There was another long moment of silence across the gathering. “Well that explains why he never contacted Pyrrha,” Yang said finally. “But it doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell us all that sooner.” 

“That…” Salem glanced away again, then forced herself to meet Yang’s eyes. “That I have no excuse for. I suppose… I thought your team might not accept a plan to explicitly work against him, even after what he did to Ruby. And after watching the Yang who loved me die in my arms, being rejected by the next one was the only thing that could have made that moment worse. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” 

“I certainly hope it doesn’t,” Yang said flatly. She took in a slow breath and let it out, and folded her hands across her lap. “Now. What are we going to do about Ozpin?” 

Xuri tentatively raised one hand to call attention to herself before she spoke. “So he’s not immortal like Salem, but he reincarnates, right?” 

“That’s right,” Yang answered her. “He comes back as a passenger in someone else’s body, and _ normally _they slowly merge into a new person. But if his host doesn’t agree with him, he can also just murder them and take over without changing himself. That’s what happened to Oscar, the kid he reincarnated into after dying tonight in our timeline.” 

“So we’d want him to keep his current body.” Xuri lifted the golden sword she held to show it to Blake and Yang, and briefly disappeared once again. “Supposedly this thing cuts straight through Aura without stopping. I’ll have to be careful, but… as a general plan, could we knock him out? Keep him contained for a little while until he cools down?” 

Xuri gave a pained look around the group, and continued. “Professor Ozpin has been a mentor to me for four years now. He runs Shade Academy too, you know. The Headmistress there is a figurehead, just a scarecrow while Ozpin makes the decisions. He gave me lessons in how to use my magic, in addition to my normal classes. I don’t really want to hurt him, but we have to do something.” 

“Knocking him out could work,” Salem said, “but it won’t be easy. He was a legendary warrior even in my time. When he dies, it’s either sickness, old age, or because he lets himself be killed. If he’s not holding back anymore, he will be _ extremely _ difficult to stop… but if anyone has a shot at it, it’s us. With me and two Maidens—”

“Three Maidens.” Blake raised her hand. “During our fight with Adam, Amber died. I am the new Fall Maiden after her.” Her eyes lit up briefly with an orange glow, then returned to normal. 

“Oh. Um…” Salem turned the staff over in her lap again, and rested a hand on her thigh where the crown was still secretly held. “We could bring her back. Is there a choice that could be made differently, so that she would live?” 

Blake shook her head. “She sacrificed herself saving me. For both of us to live we’d have to redo our entire confrontation, and even then there’s no guarantee. Unless… if you used Creation rather than Choice, would she come back with magic?” 

“Highly unlikely. Her power separated from her upon death, and transferred to you. She’d come back nonmagical, just as she was before receiving the powers in the first place. Although that does give me an idea…” 

Salem leaned back and spoke her thoughts aloud to the sky. “If we were to resurrect someone from the First Age, someone who was born with magic… I bet they’d keep it even now. The problem there is, I don’t remember anyone specifically except Ozma and maybe my parents. Now, my parents, definitely not. And Ozma… you know, Ozpin has always been more influenced by some incarnations than others. Are there any he doesn’t retain at all in his modern form? Are they considered fully dead now? Could I pull one out separately and resurrect him? That may be something to experiment with later…”

“This area has been cleared of robots.” A new voice startled Salem out of her train of thought. “Shall I move on to another sector of the city?” 

Salem twisted in her seat to see the newcomer. “Oh! Eve, good, you’re back. I was just about to call you. We’re going to go fight Ozpin.” 

“Are you sure about this?” 

“Not to kill him,” Salem added. “The goal is to incapacitate him, but not trigger his reincarnation again.” She stood and stepped back behind her chair. “Come on. Isn’t there a big plaza near here? We can minimize collateral damage to the city there.” 

Yang stood as well, and Blake and Xuri quickly followed. “There is,” she confirmed. “Armistice Square. It’s the site of the Breach, where Roman Torchwick crashed a train underground and brought Grimm from Mountain Glenn into the city. At this point in time… they’ve probably just recently finished restoring it.” 

“Perfect. With Eve completing the set, there’s really no better group for a tough fight. Team Sexy is back together!”

“I’m sorry, Team _ what?! _” Blake spluttered in surprise. 

Salem gave her a wide grin and pointed around at each member of the group. “Me, Eve, Xuri, Yang. We’re all here again. You missed it last time because you were dead, but now I guess you’re part of the team too. Let’s do this.” She waved everyone forward, then stopped short. “Wait. Xuri, have you been practicing with that sword? See if you can erase those chairs.” 

Xuri held up the Relic of Destruction in both hands, her usual silver blade resting in its sheath across her back. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the form of the plush seats arranged before her, refining their image in her mind, until she felt confident her mental conception matched the real objects almost exactly. She focused her will and imagined the image entering the blade in front of her, and the nearest chair popped out of existence with a rush of air into the vacuum it left behind. She took just a moment to retarget, and the other three vanished shortly thereafter. 

“There we go. I did practice after you showed me it was possible.” 

“Good.” Salem smiled at her newest recruit. “You should go now. Find Ozpin, pretend to still be under his thrall, and lead him to Armistice Square. We’ll be waiting.” 

Xuri lowered the golden blade, but did not yet turn and leave. “One last question before I go. This may be way off base, but… were the gods dragons? A purple one and a yellow one?” 

Salem’s eyebrows shot up and she halted midstep. “Yes, actually. They usually took human forms when speaking to people, but when angry they appeared as enormous dragons. I saw that side of them several times. What did Oz say to you?” 

“Not much.” Xuri shrugged, and vanished for another brief second. “He made himself a pair of wings in those colors and said something about the gods and their image, and then he jumped off Beacon cliff.” 

“Wings? He really is serious… But you need to go. We’ll meet again shortly.” Salem waved Xuri off, and the remaining four continued on their way. 

It was not a long walk to the plaza. Salem stopped at the edge and brought up the Relic of Creation, bracing its back end under her arm as of it were a gun. She aimed the crystal tip toward an open space near the edge of a building, and suddenly a camera on a tripod rested there, pointing toward the middle of the square. A moment later another camera joined it on the opposite side of the street, and then two more affixed to the walls fifteen feet above the others. 

“I intend to record this battle,” Salem announced. “Unless anyone has objections? In the interest of truth and transparency and doing the right thing and all that, I believe the world deserves to see what happens to their beloved Headmaster tonight. As well as learn the existence of magic, since I’m sure quite a few unexplainable events have been witnessed already by any number of bystanders.”

Salem led the way across the edge of the plaza to the next corner, stopping a few times along the way to plant video cameras high on the neighboring buildings. “And also, Yang, in the interest of truth and transparency and not leaving anything out, my additional motives… I believe Ozpin is likely to say some rather damning things today. I intend to let the world hear. The full truth must come out eventually, and I think this moment is an advantageous time for me to let that happen. The people can decide for themselves what they do with the information they hear.” 

“So you’re going public in the best moment to make people like you, so if they decide to take sides they’ll choose you over Oz.” Yang crossed her arms over her chest and regarded Salem with one eyebrow upraised. “The game never stops, does it? How about this: you can do that _ if _ you also go on camera personally to the entire world, own up to all of your interference in history and the chaos you’ve caused, and pledge for the public record that you want to turn things around and be good now. The people can decide for themselves how to hold you accountable and make sure you keep your word.” 

Salem mirrored the girl’s posture and expression. “And how do you expect to enforce that? Just with the threat of revoking your good will?”

“It sure seems like my good will holds a lot of weight with you these days. Do you expect me _ not _ to use that leverage?”

Salem beamed at her and spread her arms wide. “Now _ there’s _ the Yang I know and love! A negotiator after my own heart. Remember when you threatened to end a Maiden’s line of succession so I’d bring your friends back to life?” Of course she didn’t. “Or when you trapped me on an airship with you for hours with nothing but a pack of cards between us?” Still the wrong Yang, but the one before her looked impressed with her alternate selves. Salem offered Yang a hand. “You’ve got a deal. If we air one side’s dirty laundry, we air both.” 

Yang clasped the witch’s hand firmly and shook it. “Alright. Now finish setting those up quickly, because we have one more order of business to deal with before Ozpin shows up.” She walked hand in hand with Blake, following Salem in her circuit around the plaza. “Right now, you’re on a named team with two Beacon students. Do you know what that means?” 

Salem shook her head. “No?” 

“Blake, would you like to tell her what all teams at Beacon are required to create and master during their first year?” 

Blake smirked as Salem looked to her in confusion. “She means team attacks. Every pair within a team – that’s six normally, ten pairs for a team of five – creates their own combo move, and each one gets a name. For example, Bumblebee, named for our black and yellow colors, where I throw Yang on the end of my ribbon.” 

“That’s right!” Yang sidled up to Salem and placed a hand on her shoulder, grinning up at her with barely contained excitement. “Remember in the future, you came to us, not the other way around. You put us in charge. So if we’re back to being students again, you’re just going to have to play the part too. And besides, they _ are _ meant as a trust-building exercise. That seems like something you could use.” 

“I suppose that also includes me?” Eve asked. 

“Yep! And Xuri too, if we get a chance to talk to her again before it gets crazy. We’ve got a bit of time to brainstorm. Let’s figure out how our skills fit together, and then use that to make sure Remnant stays in one piece until morning.” 

Salem put her face in her hands for a moment, then looked up and shrugged helplessly. “Whatever you say…” 

She waved the scepter around and conjured another set of cameras, then stepped down a side street a short ways and created a solid black cube a foot to a side, with a collection of antennas sticking out of the top. “That thing will take in signals from all my video cameras and compile them into a single sensible broadcast for the CCT,” she explained. “I have no idea how it actually works, but that’s the magic of the Relic of Creation. I don’t need to know. I know such a device is possible, so I can just put that idea and the concept of working-ness through the Relic and get something usable out. Sort of like when I made a whole airship – it flew, but I had no clue how it worked inside. Maybe I can get someone to dissect the wiring later and see what the magic came up with.” 

Salem handed the Relic off to Eve and led the group back into the middle of the square. “Well, that’s it, I guess. Now we wait. And we learn how to fight together as a team.”


	15. Cycle 15 part 3: A Legend Alone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took a whole month to write. It's a real monster of a chapter, almost as long as our entire first fic Endosymbiosis. But I swore I wouldn't split Cycle 15 any further, and by the gods, I didn't! It's all here. The rest of this fic will be a breeze (pun absolutely intended).

A great column of smoke rose in the distance over the tall rooftops of Vale. There had been no fire when Ozpin had glided across the city after leaping from his clifftop perch. Something must have happened recently, something strong to ignite such a large blaze so quickly. But from the faint sound of sirens coming from the same direction, he could tell the firefighters were already present at the scene, so Vale had no need to worry about it growing out of control.

Other than that, the streets were quiet. The howls of Grimm had faded some time ago and the dark shapes which flew overhead now came alone, singular nevermores or griffons without a pack to follow them. The roving silver-white light which flared up on one street then another in an endless tour of the city had burned most ground-based Grimm to scattered ashes by now, and the many teams of Huntsmen and students were more than capable of cutting down the rest. 

The robots too were thinning significantly. Several times now Ozpin had come across platoons of them arranged in neat double lines facing each other, each one beheaded and with their guns laying by their feet. Only once had he encountered them in working condition, and a single sweep of his hand had reduced the four of them to twisted scrap. With Xuri now back at his side after being unaccounted for for a short while, he now had the power to dismember anything or anyone in his path with the golden sword she carried, but to his annoyance, nothing further presented itself. 

Not long ago he had even received an alert that many of the White Fang soldiers seemed to be falling back to their airships and leaving the city. No reason had been given in the short text sent to his scroll, but Ozpin knew the White Fang. There had to have been a change in leadership. But if Adam Taurus had been somehow eliminated, who was taking his place? Had Blake stepped up early to the task? 

But none of that mattered. The well-being of his city and his school were secondary to Ozpin’s real concern: locating the Relics that had been stolen from him, and reclaiming them. Particularly the Relic of Choice. With that crown upon his head, all of history would bend to his will once again. He could do better than take back Creation – and Knowledge, if it had also been removed from its vault tonight as he suspected. He could make sure he never lost control of them in the first place. 

And to that end, he walked toward Armistice Square. Xuri had reported that she had seen a woman with a scepter there, and her description matched the Winter Maiden and her associated Relic. It was too late to bring this Maiden into the fold. She had clearly worked with Salem for a long time and her loyalties would not be shifted, so all that could be done was to prepare the search for her imminent successor. 

Ozpin hoped he would not have to seek out a new Summer Maiden as well, but there was something a little off about Xuri recently. Her whole presence was off from the past he remembered, but his office computer had supplied copious records of a partnership lasting four years as his alternate self had trained this Maiden to be the perfect agent for his needs. She had seemed to fit the profile at first, but ever since he returned from his ill-fated journey around the world, Xuri had been acting suspicious. Too curious. Too bold. Too unwilling to walk in front of him, only to the side or behind. 

His musings stopped short as the pair entered the edge of the square. The Winter Maiden stood before them in the center of the lowered plaza, the Relic of Creation held down by her side – perfectly still and facing directly toward Ozpin and his companion, as if waiting for them both. Ozpin raised his cane and flipped it to a combat grip as he advanced down the stairs, and he frowned at the sight of three more women emerging from all around the Maiden to take up positions at her side. 

His suspicions were correct. This was a trap. Worse, he recognized all three of the newcomers. Two of his own students and traveling companions. The inseparable pair, together still. The one who had died and the one who had blamed him for it and left, in a previous future that neither remembered. And the third, his own former love and current nemesis, Salem herself. 

Ozpin turned sharply to the side to face Xuri, but the sudden movement only spurred her to vanish and reappear a moment later once her startle reflex had calmed. He held out his empty hand toward her and demanded, “Give me the Relic.” 

Xuri looked down at the golden sword in her left hand, and slowly raised it from its resting stance. She took half a step towards him… and stopped. 

Ozpin’s hand glowed dark green and he commanded her again, with the power of his magic stretching out toward the sigil that should have been on her back. “Give me the Relic, now.” 

Now Xuri moved as she was meant to, striding toward him with purpose, raising the sword until its grip was at chest height. She extended her hand to meet Ozpin’s own, but her fingers did not loosen from the Relic’s hilt. Ozpin grasped at it, eager to seize the weapon for himself, but the instant their fingers touched, everything around them changed. 

Suddenly the pair stood in a dark hall with a high arched ceiling, with walls of yellow sandstone carved with intricate patterns and a tiled mosaic floor. A light shone from in front of him, a blank white radiance that was all too familiar now, spilling forth through a tall door from the endless desert beyond. This was the vault below Shade Academy. Ozpin’s storage place for the Relic of Destruction, until he and Xuri had retrieved it together just hours ago. 

Xuri looked him in the eyes and clenched her fingers tighter around the sword. “No.” 

Xuri vanished from the vault again, leaving for the last time this place she had made so many momentary visits to, the location she had meticulously maintained in her Semblance’s queue for all this time. She reappeared in Vale with Ozpin no longer at her side, and ran to reunite with her new teammates. 

“I sent him away,” she said breathlessly. “To Vacuo. He’ll be back but we have some time. Do you know about the other end of his cane? That white ball in the handle?” 

“We’ve seen it rip open a hole in reality once,” Salem told her. “If there’s anything more you know, please tell us now.” 

“That’s basically it. He takes shortcuts through the vaults all around the world. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he can weaponize it too. I wouldn’t want to be in the way when he opens one of those portals on top of me.” 

“Me neither.” Salem shuddered. “I’ve survived being hit by just about everything on Remnant by now, but that? I’m not convinced that’s really  _ from _ Remnant. That’s godly type magic and I don’t like it one bit.” 

“But we’re ready to fight back,” Yang said. “Quickly now, we’ve got some moves to teach you. You do team attacks at Shade?” Xuri nodded. “We came up with a few. Blake, you want to do yours first?” 

The next few minutes were occupied with a flurry of magic and weapons as Xuri practiced her roles with each partner. Eve set up targets with the scepter, and once each one was knocked down the pieces were vanished by Xuri’s sword, ready for the next to appear. Each pair practiced twice, but no more before Salem called for everyone’s attention. 

“Good work everyone, now remember it during the fight. We’ll be making full use of the Relics of Creation and Destruction here, but not Choice. That one has to stay hidden and secure, because if Ozpin gets his hands on it that is  _ literally _ the end of the world. He could use it to get all the others. That means the crown can’t be on my head or anyone’s, which means we only get one shot at this. If things go wrong, we fix it with Creation instead. You all know I don’t care about the so-called proper balance of life and death.”

“Understood.” The team agreed that the crown should be left where it was, tied around an immortal leg and hidden beneath an immortal dress. 

“Now, how’s everyone’s Aura?” Salem looked at each of the others in turn. “You’ve all been in fights already tonight. Are you going to be okay, or should we kill you and bring you back now to reset your strength?” 

Yang pulled out her scroll and glanced at the Aura sensor, then returned it to her pocket. “Eighty-two percent. I’m good.”

Blake looked at her own meter and grimaced. “Fifty-two percent. Adam got me bad and I haven’t had much time to recover. Probably a good idea to stay at range. I’ll do my best.”

“I’m down to seventy-nine percent,” Xuri reported. “Not from fighting, just from holding the Vacuo vault in my Semblance queue for so long. I thought I might have to toss Grimm down there for later if I ran into too many to handle, but the Relic makes fighting them too easy.” 

Eve didn’t even look at her scroll. “My Aura is at one hundred percent.”

“So is mine,” Salem said. “I do have Aura, you know. Aura is a manifestation of the soul and that’s something I have too – no matter what Ozpin may say about me. I just don’t use my Aura. One, I don’t need to. I’m immortal. Two…” Salem sighed heavily. “Anyone who watches me fight for a while would assume my Aura is this dark fuchsia pink color, but it’s not. It’s bright turquoise and it  _ really _ doesn’t match the rest of my look. The fuchsia is just a color I happen to like, so that’s what I wear and use for my magic.”

“Now,” she continued, “Ozpin’s Aura is going to be very strong. Every time he dies, his Aura leaves that body and sticks to a new one… a new body that already has an Aura on it. Usually those Auras combine and when that body dies, the whole new bigger Aura finds itself another. And another, and another. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s gone through two hundred lifetimes now, at least. But, according to some wildly unethical experiments in Atlas about four years ago, the strengthening does get diminishing returns fairly quickly. We don’t have to break two hundred men worth of Aura, only more like twenty.”

“That’s still a lot,” Xuri remarked. “I can bypass it entirely with the sword, but that’s no good for knocking him out.”

“I can bypass Aura as well,” Eve said, “but I doubt he’ll hold still enough to give me a good grip on his arteries. And I’ve never tried to do that to someone who can fight back with magic.” 

“Just do your best. Look. I think he’s made it through the desert.”

A white line sliced vertically through the air and widened to an oval gap in the world. On the other side stood Ozpin, his cane up with the handle pointed forward, with a furious scowl toward the team of five assembled in a line before him. He stepped out onto the stone of the plaza and swept his cane up behind him, and the rift zipped shut with no trace it was ever there. 

“Xuri! How dare you betray me?!” Ozpin extended his wings to their full length upward and behind him as he stalked forward. “And you two as well! Blake and Yang! After everything we’ve been through together, how can you side with  _ her? _ ”

Xuri stared defiantly back at him. “I am not your slave,” she declared. “Salem removed the seal you placed on me. And she tells me the truth when I ask about magic and Relics.” Her eyes lit up with their green glow, and next to her Eve followed suit with her blue. 

“The Relics belong to  _ me. _ ” Ozpin ignored Xuri to speak straight ahead to Salem. “Guarding them with two Maidens won’t be enough.” 

“Two?” Salem waved a hand to her other side, toward Yang and Blake. “Try all four.” The newest Spring and Fall Maidens also activated their glows in pink and orange, and Salem created a misty red effect from her own eyes to complete the line. 

“And as for why we’re here,” Blake called to her former teacher, “it’s because you’re trying to do something that would destroy the world! You don’t have to unite the Relics! Not now, maybe not ever! Anything is better than all of Remnant being wiped from existence!”

Yang jumped in to support both her partner and her latest team. “And why work with Salem and Eve? Because they’re committed to becoming better people and with just a little bit of help, they can do it! I didn’t believe it at first either, and they’re still far from perfect, but they’ve both continued to prove themselves sincere and Vale would be in a lot worse shape right now without them!” 

Yang was already holding hands with Blake to one side and she stuck out her free hand toward Salem, who took it proudly and then extended her own free hand to Eve. There was only the tiniest flicker of movement from Eve’s face, a slight upward tick of her biological eyes, and then the scepter floated out of her grip to rest in the air while she raised both hands to connect to Salem and Xuri. 

Ozpin’s scowl deepened and he slowly brought up his cane, with a faint green glow shimmering over both the weapon and his arm. But before he could release whatever power he was bringing forth, Xuri attacked first with a wide horizontal slice of the Relic of Destruction. A barely visible ripple in the air slung off its tip, but Ozpin didn’t even flinch as the small decorative trees to either side fell in unison behind his back. Xuri let go of Eve’s hand and retrieved her other blade from across her back, already charging in with Yang close at her heels. 

“It took me a long time to realize,” she yelled to Ozpin, “but all that mentoring you gave me was never really that at all. You’ve been grooming me since I was seventeen, feeding me half-truths at every turn, trying to make me into the perfect unquestioning pawn. But that only works when you’re the only power around! How quickly the loyalty fades away when your lies are exposed…”

Ozpin flapped his wings and shot up into the air. Yang’s movement slowed and she pivoted up to fire rockets from her gauntlets, but Xuri kept running as if her target had never moved. Blasts of green shot from the end of Ozpin’s cane and exploded where they struck, forcing everyone to keep moving to avoid a devastating hit. Only Xuri was not targeted as she ran beneath him out of his view. 

Xuri dropped to the ground and rolled as she passed directly under where Ozpin hovered. Her swords swung up and over her one after the other and released projectiles first of lightning then of pure cutting force upward, while Xuri kept her momentum steady to bring herself back to her feet on the other side. 

Ozpin spun around as he dropped straight down again, and he swept his cane in an arc forward to strike the ground in front of him. Green sparks flew from the impact and a narrow ripple passed over the stone, but Ozpin was already turning back the other way without watching to see its effect. Xuri blinked back to her earlier position to avoid it, but this only put her where Ozpin expected her to go, where he was already aiming with his cane. Another pulse of dark green shot out and struck Xuri head on and she flew backward with the force of it, but at the last instant before striking the stone steps behind her her momentum stopped, cancelled by a use of her Semblance to take her to the position she had occupied a split second ago. 

“It’s not just Xuri you’ve used,” Yang called, distracting him from a followup strike. “My sister too! And Ruby was even younger!” She dodged a thin green beam from Ozpin’s free hand, and fired a pair of rockets while he was occupied with an incoming assault from Salem. “You needed someone with silver eyes on your side, because  _ maybe _ that could hurt Salem where nothing else could. You got our mother killed, and then turned to the next one before Ruby was even old enough to apply to your school herself!”

Yang stepped up to take Salem’s place, and sprayed cones of flame from her hands while the witch moved back to concentrate on something else. “And like Xuri said, your control only lasts as long as it’s unopposed! What happened when we all met Salem face to face? Ruby had the chance to use her silver eyes, and she refused! Because Salem may be part Grimm now, but she still showed enough humanity that Ruby couldn’t do it!”

A ball of light grew in Salem’s hands, pure brilliant white, growing brighter and brighter with each passing second. The witch closed her eyes, trusting in her team to keep the enemy occupied, and nearby Eve lifted the circlet off her head so she would not have to stare into the growing light. When she was finally satisfied, Salem released the orb of magic upward to float high over the center of the square, illuminating the battlefield like a miniature sun. 

“Xuri! Snowfall!” Salem called out the name of one of the moves her team had come up with. 

Xuri was not one of the people involved in Snowfall, but she understood why she had been called upon and charged in with both blades at the ready. Swings of the Relic of Destruction forced Ozpin to dodge rather than parry with his cane, controlling his movement while Xuri’s silver sword aimed to deal damage to his Aura. 

Meanwhile, the Winter and Fall Maidens sprang into action to perform their joint attack. Blake shifted her sword into its gun form and whirled it on the end of her ribbon for a moment, then threw it straight up into the air over her enemy’s head. The gun reached the peak of its flight and froze in place, held by Eve’s telekinesis, and in a flash of lightning Blake vanished from the ground to appear at twice the weapon’s height. 

Eve gave Blake a strong push sideways, toward Ozpin’s back now while Xuri was keeping his attention diverted. She held the other end of the ribbon firmly fastened to nothing in the air above him, and Blake gathered magic energy into her body as she swung down in a wide semicircular arc around it. The black gun remained perfectly still even as Blake’s weight pulled heavier on the tether, tracing out her downward course by gravity alone. 

Xuri watched her fall, pushing Ozpin’s defense to the very last moment, keeping him completely occupied with avoiding the golden blade and keeping his own weapon out of its path. But then Xuri blinked away back to the side where she had run in from, passing up an easy hit. Ozpin knew something had to be up and tried to turn, but his muscles suddenly felt sluggish as if he was swimming through molasses, every movement opposed by some intangible force. 

Blake slammed into Ozpin’s back and released all the magic she had called into herself in a single burst of pure force, without even bothering to give it a form as fire or lightning or ice. Ozpin was knocked flat on his face and half skidded, half rolled a solid twenty feet, while Blake performed a forward somersault of her own to gently slow herself down without injury. 

The anchored gun was released and dropped back to Blake’s hand, and she transformed it back to sword form as she ran forward. Blake struck at Ozpin while he was standing back up, but the handful of hits she scored only earned her a retaliation in the form of a spherical green net bursting outward from the top of Ozpin’s cane. Blake was thrown back again, but a slight nudge from Eve again let her land in a neat backhandspring rather than crashing on the hard ground. 

Fire swirled around Ozpin’s body and settled into a large circle across his upper back, around the base of his wings and extending up to the top of his head. His feet as well were wrapped in a flaming shroud and he left a trail of fire along the ground as he ran, pushing himself faster with beating wings until he was almost skimming across the stone. Blake teleported backward in a flash of lightning and knelt with her gun on the sidelines as Ozpin filled more and more of the central plaza with fire, while Xuri and Eve both took to the air to avoid it. 

Only Yang still tried to attack at close range. She propelled herself with her gauntlets, aiming for a head on strike to put Ozpin’s own momentum to work against him, but as she got close, a tendril of flame snaked out from the ring over his back to grab her and toss her aside. 

“Yang, stop!” Salem teleported practically on top of Yang, then grabbed her arm to take them both back away again. “That’s a warding halo he’s put on,” she called to the team. “It’s a Semblance, not magic. It blocks damage, but costs more for him to maintain the more individual hits it sustains. Eve, Black Eye!”

Eve tossed the Relic of Creation down to Salem, and settled down to the ground again herself as the twisting trail of flame faded out the same way it had appeared. Ozpin stood still now, waiting, ready for whatever this new named combo might be. Salem pointed the scepter at him and conjured shard after shard of darkness Dust, waving the tip of the Relic over a wide cone to send bits of sharpened crystal flying into the full space around him. 

Ozpin planted the end of his cane on the ground and faced into the swarm. Green afterimages fell off of him in all directions, each one into the path of a single shard of the black Dust. These were not quite shadow clones like Blake’s, but something all his own: a splitting into countless possible futures, each one where he dodged a different way, each one meant to absorb a different attack despite being not quite real, to make the true future in which he did not move the safest one of all. 

Had Salem been alone, his defense would have proved impenetrable. But as each shard flew at him, Eve’s magic redirected it off its straight line course, putting a sharp corner in their trajectories at the last second after Ozpin had already planned for their original paths. Many still struck one time-shifted duplicate or another, but often not those he had intended, and many more slipped in between them all to strike his motionless form. 

Clouds of inky blackness spread all over Ozpin’s body as the Dust crystals exploded on impact. Each hit was small, but that was precisely the point: Ozpin would take no damage from any external source at the moment but the flurry of hits would increase the cost of his protective Semblance, making it more efficient for him to cancel the ward himself lest he soon lose even more Aura than he would have without it. 

“Shooting Gallery!” Eve called, and Salem threw the scepter back to her and readied her hands with a soft pink glow. Xuri pointed the Relic of Destruction ahead of her and concentrated, and a large section of the ground vanished from existence. Ozpin fell into a deep pit surrounded by high walls on three sides, with the fourth open in a long upward slant in the direction of Salem. Still blinded by the lingering darkness from all the crystals that had burst around him, he manifested a shield directly above himself and struck out all around with his cane in anticipation of another assailant, but found nothing but air. 

Beams of magenta light sprang from Salem’s fingertips down the narrow hall Xuri had made for her. Each one arced just slightly to home in on her target, more to correct for the positioning of Salem’s own hands than to stop Ozpin from dodging, and before the darkness cleared all ten had pummeled him against the wall of earth and another volley was on its way. 

Up above, Xuri ran in a wide circle around the pit, refreshing the queue of locations for her Semblance to access after she had stood still for a little too long. She took a swing with her Relic as Ozpin came flying upward out of the trench and scored a hit with the wave of force from the sword’s tip, then blinked back to the other side of the plaza as he sent another exploding burst of magic toward her. 

Ozpin landed a good distance back and brought his fists together in front of his chest. A ripple passed up his arms and over his body, turning all the colors of his skin and clothes to flat gray, and Eve took advantage of the brief pause to point her scepter and fill in the chasm with stone that was almost identical to what had been there before. Only once the metallic gray had reached Ozpin’s feet did he move again, running forward to reenter the fight. 

“That’s an iron skin Semblance,” Salem informed her team. “It negates all hits below a given damage threshold. Not much you can do about it except hit him harder. It’ll run out in a minute or two.” 

Ozpin swooped low over the plaza into the middle of the group of his opponents, then stopped suddenly and spun rapidly through two full turns with his cane extended. A spiral of green energy flowed out and each Maiden had to react quickly to avoid it in their own unique ways: Blake and Eve both shot up into the air, Xuri blinked away and then back after the coiling lines had passed, and Yang simply dropped flat on her back to let the magic pass over her. 

Xuri motioned for someone to engage Ozpin at close range and Yang ran in to follow her lead. The reinforced cane fell upon her metal arm and Yang felt the impact vibrate through her entire body, but she held strong and powered through the explosion of magic that came with it to slip inside the weapon’s range. Ozpin blocked her punches with his free hand alone and it was all Yang could do to keep from being battered too hard herself, but she trusted in her teammate’s judgement. 

Suddenly Ozpin arched his back and twisted away, and a short cry of pain escaped his lips. The air rippled around his cane as he spun and left a green afterimage in its wake, mirroring the wide arc of magic he let out across the square. But Xuri was already gone, back to his other side behind Yang with her silver sword sheathed and the golden one held tight in both hands. 

Ozpin’s left wing had been shorn off near the base by a clean strike of the Relic of Destruction. Golden light bled from the wound into the air as glowing tendrils, eventually breaking apart into points that each condensed into a single yellow flower petal and drifted away. The spray of godly light passed over Yang briefly as Ozpin turned and she flinched back, but instead of the burning she expected, it felt comfortably warm and almost… empowering? 

Yang pulled back her right arm for a single hard punch. Ozpin continued his turn to face her again, but was interrupted by a sudden bolt of lightning from the sky called down by one of the many Maidens behind her. Ozpin stumbled, and Yang slammed her metal fist forward into his grayed-out collarbone. The force of it was greater than whatever minimum threshold Ozpin’s latest defensive Semblance could counter and he went flying back across the square, his remaining purple wing beating rapidly but only serving to flip him over onto his face. 

“Good job, Xuri!” Yang gave the young Huntress a thumbs-up. 

“You too, Yang! Thanks for keeping him still for me!” 

“Any idea what his status is? I feel like I’ve lost a good quarter of my Aura so far.” 

“Probably still high,” Salem cut in before Xuri could speak. “He gets a new Semblance for every Aura he takes on, and I have no idea how many of those are defensive ones. Just do as Eve always says: conserve your own energy, because you never know how long a fight will last. And remember, if this does get bad, we have the Relics to fix it.”

* * *

“Oh,  _ there _ you are.” Glynda waved her companion closer. “I was beginning to think I’d lost you.”

“Sorry.” General Ironwood shut the door behind him and set a mostly empty mug down on the table. “I ducked out for a cup of coffee on the way. Are we ready?”

The single aide wearing a headset looked up from adjusting a knob on the side of his large video camera and confirmed, “It’s all set up. You’ll be live on almost every major network, whenever you’re ready.”

“But not VNN,” Glynda said. “I ran into Lisa Lavender while you were out, James. Their main building has been hit hard by Grimm, so she’s here in the CCT tower with us preparing her own report. I borrowed one of her cameramen.” She gestured to the space beside her, and Ironwood drained the last bits of his coffee and came to stand with her in front of the camera. “You know what to say?”

Ironwood nodded. “I do. We keep it simple, don’t say anything we wouldn’t say normally, keep focused on the future.” 

Glynda rested both hands behind her back. “Agreed. We can begin.” The aide took a brief moment to recenter the frame over both of them, then flipped a switch on the side of the camera and gave a silent thumbs-up as he stepped back. 

“Good evening. My name is Glynda Goodwitch, assistant Headmistress of Beacon Academy, and this is General Ironwood, Headmaster of Atlas Academy. As I am sure by now you are aware, there has been a major attack on Beacon and on the city of Vale tonight. The situation is ongoing but is rapidly being brought under control once again, and we wish to give an update with what we know so far.”

General Ironwood took over without a moment’s pause as Glynda completed her introduction. “The attack began at 5:52 PM when airships controlled by the White Fang released Grimm onto Amity Colosseum. The Huntsmen and students present were able to protect the civilians and no major injuries are reported, but the panic attracted a much larger crowd of Grimm to the city.”

“Shortly thereafter,” Glynda continued for him, “the network of Atlesian battle drones was compromised by a virus which turned their targeting against the very people they were brought to Vale to protect. I would like to make it clear that we do not hold the Kingdom of Atlas or its military responsible for this attack. We cannot name anyone at this time, but we have solid leads toward the true culprits’ identities, which we will pursue to our fullest ability.”

“This was a coordinated effort by a team of enemies,” Ironwood said. “The White Fang worked alongside human attackers, whose exact goals are not yet known, as well as a third party who we believe to be responsible for the hacks. The human attackers have already been brought to justice. I will be conducting a thorough review of my own forces to eliminate the possibility of a rogue agent on the inside. Atlas and Vale stand together in peace and will cooperate fully with–”

Ironwood and Glynda both glanced away from the camera as the door to the room was pushed open, and the reporter Lisa Lavender hurried in with a portable drive in one hand and her scroll out in the other. “So sorry to interrupt, but this can’t wait.” She pushed into the frame next to Ironwood and addressed the camera. “This is Lisa Lavender of the Vale News Network with a breaking update. The White Fang has pulled out of Vale. One of our reporters in the field had an encounter with the High Leader herself and recorded the following statement. Viewers should exercise discretion, as elements of this content are graphic.” 

Lavender plugged the thumb drive into her scroll and pressed a button on her screen, and the outgoing live feed was replaced with a playback of her recording. Sienna Khan stood on a nondescript Vale street flanked by her two masked attendants, with the sword and severed head of Adam Taurus still prominently in her hands. 

“To the people of Vale and of Remnant,” she declared, “human and Faunus alike, I, Sienna Khan, High Leader of the White Fang, bring a message. The attack this city has suffered tonight came at the hands of a rogue cell within the White Fang, led by Adam Taurus, who wished to declare war on humanity. This is  _ not _ the position of the White Fang as a whole and I do  _ not _ condone Adam’s actions. He has been dealt with–” Sienna hefted the skewered head higher, with Adam’s horns clearly visible even if none recognized his face. “–and his loyalists are scattered. The  _ true _ White Fang hereby offers our assistance in rebuilding Vale and undoing the damage our brothers caused, to whatever extent our help will be accepted.”

Sienna’s message ended and the recording cut off a moment later, and Lavender disconnected the drive and pocketed both it and her scroll. Glynda leaned forward slightly to turn to her across Ironwood. “That is an important update,” she acknowledged, “but if you’ll excuse us, we were in the middle of our own message to the people, so if you could please return to your own network…?”

“That’s the second thing,” Lavender said to her, then looked back at the camera again. “The frequency for VNN has been hijacked by a different live broadcast. To all our viewers in Vale, please look at channel four on a separate screen. For those elsewhere in the world, navigate to the VNN website for a livestream there.” She gestured to the camera operator in the room with them, and he hurried to open his scroll and plug it into the table’s holographic display so that everyone there could watch as well. 

Glynda and Ironwood looked on in horror at the sight before them. It was a view into the heart of downtown Vale to the newly refinished Armistice Square, the site of an annual celebration of the end of the Great War and also of a separate attack on the city not long ago. The perspective shifted every ten to fifteen seconds, always showing the plaza but from a new angle, always showing the six people fighting there with every ounce of skill they had. 

The two Academy leaders shared a look. Between them they recognized every one of the combatants, and they knew exactly what caused the bursts of green and pink, the swathes of fire, the lightning flashing across the field… did they really have to say it? But with such a public display to the world… Glynda took one last look back at the broadcast, then murmured up to Ironwood beside her, “We have no choice.”

“A historic event is taking place as we speak in downtown Vale,” she said to the camera. “General Ironwood and myself will be watching it with you, and we can provide some amount of context for what you see.” At these words, Lavender finally stepped out of the frame and left the two of them to explain what they knew, while she watched the other broadcast from the side. 

“For a long time I debated the wisdom of telling the world what we are about to tell you now,” Ironwood said. “I weighed the right of the people to know the truth against the knowledge that telling the truth would cause a panic unlike any other in modern history. But seeing those six people battling openly in that manner tonight, there can be no further holding back. I sincerely apologize to the world for not telling you sooner.”

“Magic is real.” Glynda came out with the first of many revelations. “Since the founding of the four Huntsman Academies, each Headmaster has known, and each has been sworn to secrecy. Recall that Professor Ozpin was the youngest ever to be appointed to a Headmaster position, and at the time many believed him to be unqualified. Yet he was chosen to lead Beacon anyway, because unlike most, he is capable of wielding magic himself. See this in the way he is fighting tonight.”

“Magic has always been limited to only six people at a time,” Ironwood continued. “Four who we call Maidens, and two who are different. Look at the four young women whose eyes are glowing: blue, orange, green, pink. There is always one of each, though as far as we know, there is no fundamental difference in their powers. The others are Ozpin and–” Ironwood hesitated, and glanced down from the camera for a moment. “And Salem. They are…” He stopped again, and looked helplessly to Glynda. 

Glynda decided to take a different approach to the subject. “This world is older than most people think. Much older. There is history that the modern world has forgotten. But the past still affects us here and now, and it’s time the past was better known.” 

She took a deep breath and let it out before continuing with her explanation. “Magic is real, and once upon a time, all people could use it freely. Through means unknown to me, a woman named Salem achieved true immortality. Salem angered the brother gods, and they withdrew from the world and took the blessing of magic with them, though Salem was somehow able to safeguard her own power. The gods’ final act on Remnant was to create their own pseudo-immortal to keep her in check. Professor Ozpin is also from this ancient, lost time.”

“He lives and dies as normal,” Ironwood cut in, “but upon death he returns again. He has fought against Salem for millennia to protect the world… or so he always told us. Ozpin gifted much of his power to create the four Maidens, and their power returns after death just as Oz himself does. But it seems, today at least, the Maidens have all taken Salem’s side.”

A look from Glynda silenced him, and she spoke again on a new and more pressing subject. “This evening has been hard on us,” she said. “Not only because of the revealing of so many well-kept secrets… but because we have come to realize Professor Ozpin may have been keeping more secrets even from us, who he claimed to trust. In particular… I no longer believe the eternal conflict between him and Salem is as clear-cut as I once did. Never before have they come to blows directly like this. Never before has so much been at stake. And to be totally honest, I don’t know what to think anymore.”

Ironwood put it more directly. “To be clear, we have received information that suggests Salem is responsible for both the majority of the ongoing attack on Vale  _ and _ the majority of the defense against said attack. Miss Goodwitch here has met both immortals face to face tonight and what they said has overturned years of our beliefs. All the facts are not yet clear, but… hold on.” Ironwood looked away from the camera. “Turn the volume up a little, please?”

Lavender and the cameraman both reached out at once to adjust the playback settings of the projected feed, and a moment later the sounds of battle intensified, along with voices cutting through the thunder and the clashing blades. Ozpin was yelling across the battlefield toward Salem, and his words could now be heard clearly in the conference room and were picked up on the other broadcast. 

“… _ not _ just going to stand idly by while  _ you _ steal everything I’ve kept safe for millennia! The four of them were given to  _ me _ and I will do with them what I please!” 

Salem’s response came through just as clearly. “What you please? What happened to the divine purpose of restoring the world? Or were you just pretending this whole time? Lying to yourself as well as everyone around you?”

“My purpose is to stop  _ you! _ ” Ozpin paused to deflect a blast of magic with his cane and send it back toward his opponents. “I am the chosen paladin of the God of Light! The gods deemed you a threat, and I am empowered to act in their name. Whatever stunt you’re pulling, stealing away my Huntresses like this, I  _ will _ stop it! I will not see the world bow to you, now or ever!”

“She hasn’t stolen any of us,” a third voice called. A voice recognizable to Glynda as one of her own students, from a girl recognized by the world as a previous contestant in the Vytal tournament: Yang. “She came to us and explicitly put our team in charge. Salem surrendered! You were there! It was  _ our _ decision to save Beacon and Vale tonight, because that’s what good people who care about the world do!”

“I care about this world the way the gods intended!” Ozpin yelled at her. “There is a balance that must be kept. I may not like the Fall of Beacon, but that is what happened and it is not to be changed!” Ozpin thrust his cane into the air over his head, and lightning cracked from its tip toward all five of the women opposing him. 

“You do act the way the gods did,” Salem jeered. “Very hands-off, until it’s time to punish someone! No wonder the world has never known peace under your guidance!” 

“Set aside all of that,” came a new voice, another student. “Regardless of Salem’s intentions,” Blake said, “you are actively trying to destroy the world! Preventing that is the only side anyone needs to take. For a long time I respected you, I thought you were doing what was right for Remnant, but now? I see it was never about Remnant, just your personal feud.”

“They are one and the same thing,” Ozpin countered. “Salem must not be given an inch of ground. And if her advance is inevitable, then a scorched-earth approach must be taken. Everyone who is tortured begs for death – I can give it to them, and save them from enduring that pain before it begins!”

Glynda motioned to Lavender at the table and she turned the volume of the transmission down again until it was barely audible. “Well,” she said to the camera. “I think I understand a little more of what’s happening now. I had hoped I would never have to do this, but in light of Ozpin’s words tonight… I, Glynda Goodwitch, hereby relieve Professor Ozpin of his position as Headmaster on grounds of mental instability and failure to protect the welfare of his students, and I take full command of Beacon Academy myself as its new interim Headmistress. Subject to review by the Vale Council, of course.”

Ironwood bowed his head momentarily, then physically turned to face Glynda, letting the camera see his side rather than his face. “As Headmaster of Atlas Academy, I formally recognize and welcome Glynda Goodwitch as the Headmistress of Beacon.” He extended a hand and Glynda shook it, and both turned back to speak to the world again. 

“Now,” Glynda said, “Another history lesson, to give context for what you have just heard. When the gods left Remnant, they gave four Relics to the world: Creation, Destruction, Knowledge, and Choice. Two of them are present in the ongoing battle downtown. The scepter of Creation, held by…” She looked to Ironwood. “What did you say her name was?”

“Eve Silver, Atlas Special Operative.”

“And the sword of Destruction, held by Xuri Ahavh, Huntress from Shade. There is also a lamp and a crown. Each one grants unimaginable power to whoever wields it, but what matters tonight is what happens if they are all brought together. If all four Relics are collected in the hands of a single person, the gods will be summoned back to Remnant, and they will render a judgment upon us all. If we are united in peace, they will remain; if not, the world will be destroyed. Ozpin knows we are not currently united in peace.”

“But as we intend to make abundantly clear,” Ironwood interrupted, “Atlas and Vale should not have continued hostilities over the unfortunate sabotaging of our robots. The ones responsible will be found and brought to justice. Our kingdoms desire only peace with one another.” 

Ironwood stopped and looked to Glynda, but she only stared back as if expecting him to continue speaking. After a brief moment of silence, Ironwood addressed the camera again. “I believe that is all we have to say for now, although we have necessarily given only a very brief account of these important events. I am sure all of this is difficult to believe, but the evidence lies before you. Watch, and form your own opinions, but above all please try to remain calm.”

“I wish we could have revealed all this to you sooner, or at any better time than now,” Glynda said. “There have been many moments when those of us in the know questioned why it was ever allowed to fade into legend in the first place. General Ironwood and myself will be here to answer the questions I’m sure you all have, and we will do our best to get some or all of the magical people themselves to fill in what even we do not yet know. Once again, we are sorry it has come to this, but we are committed to maintaining peace and justice throughout Remnant and we humbly ask your forgiveness for keeping secrets for so long.”

Glynda made a barely perceptible gesture to the camera operator and the feed shut down. “You’re off the air,” he confirmed. “Now, uh… is this for real? Magic? Immortals? Gods? Come on, there’s no way.”

Lavender seemed much more inclined to believe them. “You have got to tell me  _ everything _ ,” she gushed, and a notepad and pencil appeared in her hands so fast it was almost as if they’d come from nowhere. “This is the story of a lifetime! I’m well known in Vale. People trust my reports. Tell me everything you know about magic and I can have an article out  _ by morning  _ that sums it all up in a way everyone can understand and believe.”

Glynda hesitated before giving an answer, and Lavender launched into a whole new rush of words to fill the silence. “And interviews! I need to speak to these magicians myself.” She pointed up at the projected screen where the vicious battle still raged. “That one with the yellow hair, isn’t she a Beacon student? The one who got disqualified from the tournament? What’s it like teaching someone like that?”

Glynda let out a heavy sigh and looked to Ironwood. “I hope you didn’t have any other plans for the evening.” 

* * *

The battle in Armistice Square still raged on without pause. This place was meant to be a symbol of peace and unity. A commemoration of the four kingdoms coming together to rebuild, almost like a miniature Vytal Festival in between the eight year cycle when the main event came to Vale. 

Now it served the opposite purpose, as representatives of all the world came together to fight. Ozpin, who had lived lifetimes in every kingdom, and Salem, outside them all. Yang, a native of Vale, and Xuri, from Vacuo. Eve, whose predecessor had lived and worked in Mistral, who had moved to Atlas upon becoming her present self. And Blake who had grown up in Menagerie, a settlement that met all the criteria of population and infrastructure and was denied kingdom status out of racism alone. 

But at least the Vytal spirit of cooperation seemed to be alive and well among the team of five witches, if not also the man they opposed. Ozpin blocked or deflected most attacks coming from a single assailant, with such speed and field awareness to turn away even near simultaneous assaults from the group’s many weapons. But the coordinated attacks, those specialized for two people exactly and no one else, those perfect combinations of skills had not yet once failed to hit their mark. 

“Watchtower!” Xuri called out the name of one of her own team attacks. Immediately Eve ran to the center of the plaza, giving a telekinetic shove to Ozpin as she passed him by. The Relic of Creation spun in her hands to point its crystal tip downward, and Eve rose up on a pillar of stone growing out of the plaza’s surface. She stopped six feet up and the scepter floated up to rest horizontally across her midsection. 

Eve scanned around her in all directions, using her augmented vision over the heads of all below. The four corners of the lowered space held their decorative planters, now mostly reduced to piles of brush after being in the way of the Relic of Destruction. Loose stones and fragments littered the steps at one end where a heavy punch from Yang had missed its mark. Xuri blinked back and forth between two positions only, while the rest of the team held steady and sent magic at Ozpin from afar. Eve took it all in and concentrated, drawing invisible lines in her mind from Ozpin outward, marking spots along the periphery of the field. 

The scepter made a full circle around her body, pointing outward and down, keeping contact around her middle while both her hands remained free. In a rare instance of Eve not using her magic for telekinesis, blue light grew from a point between her fingers into a wispy sphere that billowed in phantom wind. She turned around on her pedestal to face Ozpin and raised the ball of magic over her head, brightening its light even more to make sure she had his full attention. 

Xuri pointed the Relic of Destruction and deleted the column of stone from beneath Eve’s feet. Eve brought her hands down as she fell as if to slam the glowing sphere into the ground, and Ozpin readied a defensive stance facing her. He held his cane with a hand on each end, preparing to absorb the coming blast as it rippled across the ground toward him, and leaned into it as it approached – and stumbled forward, off balance, because no real force was behind the show of power. 

Two dozen narrow blades shot out from the hidden places where Eve had created them moments before. Each was positioned where it could fly in a straight line to Ozpin, between all of Eve’s allies as they held their positions steady, and this crowd of needles was the true attack that she had set up while Xuri helped her make a distraction. They struck all at once from every direction, and Ozpin only managed to swat a single one out of the air before it pierced his Aura. 

The instant their task was complete, Eve shoved all of her new blades down to the ground. Just as she had anticipated, Ozpin let out a burst of magic in all directions with the intent of scattering them back at his enemies, but the green net passed over them harmlessly. Eve picked half of them up again and jabbed at random into Ozpin’s back and sides, and sent the whole group away when he whirled around to capture them in a bubble of force extending from his left hand. The entire set of metal slivers bunched together a good distance away from him, and Xuri wiped them from existence to free up Eve’s concentration again. 

But Xuri’s own focus through the sword left her vulnerable. Ozpin pointed his cane and a fast-moving projectile of green light shot from the end, and struck Xuri’s right wrist just above the golden sword’s hilt. Her grip loosened on reflex as her body reacted to the hit and she sheathed her silver blade to reach out for the falling Relic with her other hand, but a second blast struck hard into her side and knocked her to the ground. 

Ozpin sprinted forward, ignoring the splashes of magic against his own body as he raced to recover the sword. Eve extended her magic to pull on his ankle and Ozpin tripped, but not quite soon enough. He sprawled forward just as the golden sword also struck the ground, and his hand closed around the Relic’s hilt before Eve could drag him back. 

Xuri picked herself up first and blinked back to her previous position, but the sword was already gone. Ozpin spun as he stood and swung diagonally upward, releasing a cutting wave across Eve’s body. She staggered backward under the first major hit to her Aura of the whole night, and spent the next few moments raising pillars chest high with the Relic of Creation to give the team some cover against the sword’s long range attacks. 

Xuri was intent on taking the Relic back, and she swung her imitation sword with its Dust channel filled with pale blue. A thin wave of the same color sliced forward and suddenly Ozpin’s right leg was coated in ice, with a short streak of ice continuing along the ground next to his foot. Ozpin brought his cane around in his left hand and smacked the ice over his knee, cracking it enough to let him bend his leg again, but the delay let a beam of fuchsia light from Salem almost knock him down again. 

He let out a wordless cry of frustration and stowed his cane again, bringing the Relic of Destruction to bear in both hands as Xuri closed the short distance between them. He led with a wide horizontal strike and Xuri matched it with her own sword, intending to block it downward and push in to elbow him in the face – but this was no ordinary clash of blades. The golden sword cleaved straight through the silver as if nothing even blocked its way, and its tip missed Xuri by inches on its way past. 

The cutting arc that flew from the Relic’s end scored a line across Xuri’s collarbone, and the girl was thrown back to land prone a few feet away. Ozpin leapt into the air and gave a single flap of his one wing to follow her, switching to a backhand grip in midair before plunging down again. Blake sprinted toward the pair with her weapons sheathed, but she already knew she could not reach Xuri before Ozpin landed with his killing blow. 

At the last second Xuri rolled aside, helped along by a push from Eve, and behind her the Relic pierced hilt deep into the ground. Blake dropped to her knees and grabbed Xuri with both hands, and both were gone in a flash of lightning before Ozpin could pull the sword out again and renew his attack. 

“Xuri, over here!” Eve beckoned her. She had the Relic of Creation firmly in hand now rather than floating beside her, and as Xuri watched, a new and intact copy of her Dust-powered sword appeared from thin air and hovered there, waiting for her. 

Yang took the opportunity to name another one of her team’s combos. “Watching The World Burn!” she called. 

Salem moved to join her, and put one hand on Yang’s back between her shoulderblades. Her hand and the area around it took on a faint red-orange glow, and Salem leaned forward to speak softly into Yang’s ear. “You know, I  _ really _ have objections to this name,” she said. “I’m trying  _ not _ to let the world burn down around me anymore.”

“Oh, stop, you know it fits well for the pair of us.” Yang’s own hands and gauntlets glowed orange as well and she punched the air repeatedly as if firing rockets, but instead of the usual explosive rounds, her gauntlets released tall columns of flame that moved in arcs along the ground. 

Ozpin threw out a hand, and a narrow beam of light leapt forth instantaneously onto Blake and adjusted itself to hold steady over her heart. Dark green spread down its length from Ozpin’s end, met with purple from Blake, mixing into a gradient in the middle. Blake looked down in surprise and waved a hand through the beam to no effect, more confused than anything else as this new magic – or was it a Semblance? – seemed to be doing nothing. Tracing back its other end she saw that Ozpin had released it to attach into his own chest, and he was completely ignoring the fiery pillars that snaked toward him one after the other. 

Suddenly suspicious, Blake held her fire and watched carefully for the moment one of Yang’s magically enhanced projectiles made contact with Ozpin. She left a shadow clone behind just as the first struck, and just as she had suspected, the link flashed orange and her copy was immolated by redirected power. The beam reconnected to her the instant her clone was gone, but Blake was safe, and more importantly – Ozpin had flinched with the impact. 

“Keep it up, Yang! You’re still doing partial damage. I can handle this!” Blake kept up the steady rhythm of clone after clone, focusing intently on Ozpin from a distance. He was attempting to strike at both Xuri and Yang with the Relic of Destruction, but more often than not his magical waves flew wide as Eve interfered with his body’s movement. Finally Yang’s barrage ended as her gauntlets ran out of rounds to be transformed, and Blake ran to meet up with her and Salem. “How do I get this thing off of me?”

“Easy,” Salem said. “Look at it, it’s got both your Aura colors. It’s symmetrical. You take three quarters of what’s done to him, but he also takes three quarters of what’s done to you.” She held up a hand and a pink circle appeared around it, gradually filling in with smaller concentric circles each a shade brighter than the last. With her other hand she made a tiny gesture to the side, and said in a low voice, “Don’t actually let this hit you.”

Salem pushed the disk of magic to flare brighter, to make sure Ozpin saw what she was doing in between his wild swings of the Relic. She held up her other hand hidden just behind the light and ticked down three fingers, to two, to one. When the silent countdown ended, Blake vanished into shadow and appeared just to the side, as her link to Ozpin was suspended and her empty copy took the full force of Salem’s magic. 

Ozpin stopped and stood with his hands together, sword pointing up and cane down like two ends of a single weapon. He held the stance in perfect stillness and a thin film of translucent green grew over him – and then the outline moved without him, stepping away as a separate human form with a different face, longer hair, and a spectral copy of the same cane Ozpin held. A second phantom followed, six inches shorter and with another unfamiliar face, still holding the cane. And a third, and a fourth, an unending stream of ghosts from Ozpin’s past called back to fight again. 

“He has a Semblance like Sun’s too?” Blake asked aloud to no one in particular. 

“Worse,” Salem replied. “A Semblance fused with magic, unique to Ozpin. I remember when he looked like most of these. Don’t worry, I can’t imagine he can keep this up for long.”

Each Maiden fell back on their own weapons to cut or punch through the hordes of phantom Huntsmen, which thankfully took only a single hit each to dissipate back into fading light. But there were just so many, and they seemed to be susceptible only to physical attacks. Salem’s favored magenta bolts passed through without effect and she was soon surrounded, and Eve fared little better as her telekinesis failed to slow the ghosts and their alarmingly solid canes. 

Eve resorted to stabbing with the Relic of Creation to destroy the shades. Even with her magic helping manipulate the scepter faster and with better precision than her untrained hands could manage, she found herself pushed back under the steady assault, barely able to even see around her through the layers of green. 

“Where is the Relic of Choice?” Ozpin yelled to Salem, without moving a muscle beyond those needed to speak. “I know you have it somewhere!”

“I hid it where it’s well protected,” Salem called back. “And I am  _ not _ going to bring it out in front of you!”

“Really? We’ll see about that!” Ozpin finally broke his stillness and no more past lives emerged to fight for him, but those already present did not disappear. He made a full circular swing with the golden sword and everyone except Blake was caught by the wave of force, and while they were recovering Ozpin pivoted to focus on his real target. The one who so annoyingly hindered everything he tried to do as if his own body was just a plaything to do with as she wished. The one who carried another Relic out in the open. 

Eve still struggled in the midst of a crowd of translucent green figures, instinctively lashing out with magic as the only real weapon she had despite its ineffectiveness, even as the rest of her team were finishing off the last of theirs. Ozpin collapsed his cane and hung it back on his belt again, then swung the golden sword in a hard downward arc at Eve to send another wave slicing from one shoulder to the opposite thigh. 

In a blur Ozpin was gone, transformed the way Ruby always did, into a small hooded figure wrapped in the black and green of his current clothing. A variety of leaves sprayed out behind him as he flew, green and yellow and crispy brown, littering the ground with signs of every season mixed together at once. The last few of his summoned shades dissipated as he passed through them, leaving Eve alone as Ozpin emerged back to human form practically on top of her. 

Ozpin led with the sword. At this close range there was no room to aim a careful strike, and no need. He let his momentum carry him and thrust the Relic forward, and despite Eve’s magic slowing him and shoving him back, the golden blade pierced deep between her ribs. Her Aura was still moderately strong, but none of it mattered to the Relic of Destruction’s impossibly sharp edge. A brief whimper escaped her lips and she dropped to the ground, and both Ozpin and the scepter he coveted fell with her as the magic holding them faded. 

“Eve!” Salem’s desperate cry echoed across the plaza and all movement seemed to stop with the shock of what had happened. There were two flashes of soft golden light and suddenly Salem stood over the fallen Maiden, one foot on the Relic of Creation by her side. Ozpin was in the process of bending down to take it when Salem appeared in his way, and she launched a furious uppercut to his face with nothing but her bare fist. Only after he staggered back in pain and surprise did she blast him with a flood of magic to send him flying back into the leaves he had left behind. 

A cloud of blue lifted from Eve’s body and rushed across the short space to surround Salem, but it merely swirled around her as if confused, not sinking in to make her the next Winter Maiden. Though she had been in Eve’s final thoughts, Salem already possessed magic, and despite appearances she was certainly not young. And if this first candidate was not eligible, then the power would just have to find someone else. 

The Winter magic swirled out into a cohesive form again away from Salem, and started to set off for some unknown part of Remnant and some unsuspecting new host. Salem threw out a hand after it and a glowing net of her own magic burst forth to surround the blue, and she was nearly pulled off balance by a phantom force born of the two powers’ interaction. 

“Yang! The scepter! Bring her back!” Salem kicked the Relic of Creation closer to her teammate and braced herself to continue her tug of war with the fleeing magic. She looked over at Ozpin as well as she could from her present position and yelled to him as well. “Because when people die unjustly before their time, I want them back! And not even you or the gods can stop me!” 

“No one dies before their time,” Ozpin yelled back at her. “That’s what ‘their time’ means! And I’ve decided her time is now!” 

Salem ignored him for a moment to instruct her team. “You two, Desert Mirage! Yang, I know you can do this without help. You brought back Sienna Khan once all on your own, and you’d never even met her. Just focus and it will be okay.” But she couldn’t just let Ozpin’s words go unchallenged. “One’s time should be when they choose it,” she argued, “and not before! Why shouldn’t everyone be immortal until they’ve had enough? So that no one’s goals go unfinished, so that no one leaves this world unfulfilled! I don’t know how I’d arrange that, but if it’s possible you can bet I’m going to try. Because that’s what I believe is fair!”

Ozpin said nothing in response. He only watched and raised one hand off the golden sword, as Yang picked up the scepter and Blake and Xuri ran together in a line separating him from where Yang and Salem stood. Magical projectiles shot from his palm in rapid succession, curving to seek out both stationary targets in an attempt to break their concentration. 

Xuri grabbed Blake’s hand, and the pair of them teleported together to intercept each missile wherever it crossed their path. Xuri’s Semblance let her be in any place she chose along that boundary, and with Blake’s own Semblance to absorb the hits, together they created a formidable defense. Behind them, Yang pointed the scepter aimlessly to one side and clenched her eyes tightly shut. 

“Quickly please, Yang,” Salem called, as she stumbled forward a few steps. 

“Not helping!” Yang took a deep breath and started over. She focused first on Eve’s physical appearance, the face and clothing she could see right in front of her, and once that became clear enough she moved on to remember as much as she could of the woman’s personality. Her speech, her mannerisms, the way her almost robotic affect lent itself to moments of deadpan wit. Her intense confidence and loyalty, and surprising compassion beneath the terrifying exterior. Before long a swirling dome of magic and Aura took shape beside Yang, just as she had seen it before when resurrecting Raven, and once the deep blue had covered its surface the magic faded. 

“All done!” Yang called, and stepped back from the duplicate, living Eve laying near her murdered original. 

Salem gestured with her head to wave her closer. “We’re not quite done yet,” she said. Yang moved to stand at her side and paused awkwardly, unsure how to help. “Connect your strength to mine. Don’t worry about how, a lot of magic is intuitive. Just do it.” 

Yang reached out to where Salem’s hands were clenched together holding the net of glowing fuchsia lines, and wrapped her own hands around the witch’s. From her forearms out, a haze of yellow extended through the guide of Salem’s magic, and knitted itself into a second set of tendrils woven tightly in with the first. The trapped essence of Winter magic was pulled closer with their combined efforts, and Yang and Salem slowly took steps backward to drag it along. 

Eve stood and moved around to help position herself in the path of the blue magic. Yang and Salem focused, working in unison even though neither said a word, pulling closer, downward, closer some more. Eve reached out toward the net and the strands of magenta and yellow parted around her fingers, and color raced up her arm to surround her body with a haze of blue. The Winter magic pulsed slightly and swirled around her, then finally sank in and vanished from sight. 

Immediately the magical nets that had leashed this power disintegrated into fading motes of light, and Yang and Salem separated to catch their breath. At their feet, the dead Eve’s head lifted slightly, and the black glass circlet floated up from it to click into place on Eve’s new body. 

Eve smiled. “That’s better,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about the afterlife. I didn’t get a very good look at it as I passed through. Are the rest of you okay?” She gently tugged on the scepter, and Yang released it to rejoin its usual bearer. 

“Aura’s not as high as I’d like, but we’re all still standing,” Yang said. “But Ozpin’s not even slowing down. I’m… honestly, starting to wonder if maybe this wasn’t such a great idea.”

Salem merely shrugged at the suggestion. “Look, worst case scenario is I take the scepter and teleport away, and I resurrect the rest of you later. We lose nothing.”

“Except all our magic,” came Xuri’s voice from the side, and Salem glanced over to her in surprise. “It looked like that took you guys some work to restore Eve the way she was. Blake and I handled the defense just fine, but look. I don’t know what he’s doing over there now, and I’m not entirely sure I want to find out.”

A rift in space hung vertically in the air on the other side of the plaza. Ozpin stood just inside on the otherworldly sands, his back turned to the gap, to all of Remnant, as he stared up into the blank white sky above him. He held the Relic of Destruction up in one hand and his cane in the other, both raised over his head as if on display. 

“Brother gods of Light and Darkness,” he cried out into the emptiness between worlds, “Your steward calls! Return to your creation! Recognize this Relic and this power you bestowed upon me, and return!”

There was no answer. Ozpin stared out in silence a moment longer, then tried another approach. “Why grant me the ability to step out into the realm of gods, if you did not intend for me to follow you? I have served you faithfully for millennia! Answer me, Brothers! Return as you promised you would!”

Still, there was no response from the void. Ozpin took a deep breath and lowered the sword and cane, and then yelled out a single word. Salem and the four Maidens all clapped their hands to their ears at the sound of it, not because of the volume, but rather the sheer  _ power _ and  _ importance _ and  _ majesty _ behind those few syllables. A moment later Ozpin bellowed a second word into the white sky just like the first, another handful of sounds that pierced through the listeners’ heads without deigning to stop and be comprehended. 

Salem glanced around to her team as the five of them slowly uncovered their ears. “Were those… names? How can he know…” She trailed off as she thought back on what she had just heard, and realized that not a single syllable of either name remained in her memory. “Okay, um…” She met each Maiden’s eyes in turn. “He  _ shouldn’t  _ be able to call the gods back without all four Relics, but that doesn’t mean we should let him keep trying. He’s got his back turned. We can hit him with everything we’ve got.”

Xuri hefted her single sword and activated a charge of earth Dust in its central channel. “Since he’s holding still for once… Needlepoint? Soft, obviously.” 

“Alright.” Blake sheathed her own weapon and stood behind Xuri to place both hands on her shoulders. Lightning flashed from two shadow clones left behind directly into the rift, and Xuri utilized the immense speed of their not quite instantaneous travel to add power to her forward stab. With the Dust also enhancing the weight of her sword, this single strike into the center of Ozpin’s back sent him sprawling forward into the sand, and Xuri blinked herself and Blake back out again almost before he even hit the ground. 

The team of five scattered as Ozpin picked himself up again and reentered the world with a wide swing of the Relic. He pivoted and brought up the collapsed handle of his cane across the gap still hanging in the air, and the fabric of reality knitted itself together again without a trace of disturbance. The cane returned to the side of his belt and he thrust out his empty hand toward Salem. 

Shimmering golden chains of solidified Aura condensed around her and locked her arms to her sides. Salem yelped in indignation and magical sparks flew as she tried to burst the restraints, to no avail. Four thin whips of the same golden material shot out across the square, and suddenly the entire team found themselves wrapped in the same chains and pulled toward her as the connections between them shrank back to nothing. Ozpin ran forward with the Relic of Destruction clasped tight in a two-handed grip, slowed somewhat by Eve but still able to push through with a little magic of his own. 

“Xuri, do something!” If Salem’s efforts could not quite snap the chains and Blake’s shadow clones merely stretched them, maybe a longer range teleport could still save them all. Though much of Xuri’s body was immobilized, she leaned to the side against Yang’s shoulder and willed her Semblance to take effect not on herself, but only her teammate. Yang vanished from the tight crowd, banished back to her location ten seconds earlier, and the gap filled in an instant as Eve was pulled a little closer. 

Blake vanished next, to a spot not far outside the group but still safely away from the golden chains, followed by Eve who reappeared a good distance away next to Yang. Xuri pushed her Semblance to act on Salem as well, but nothing happened, even as she tried again. As the first to be captured, Salem had been stationary for too long, so she had nowhere to go except where she already stood. But she was the last one still bound, and Xuri could fall back on a more conventional trick as Ozpin closed in. 

Salem and Xuri vanished together, back to nearly the end of her Semblance’s queue, where Xuri herself had been snared. But Ozpin did not slow even as the last people escaped his convenient target; if anything he spurred himself faster through the last few feet. 

There was only one person he could still be aiming for. Blake had moved the least from her prison and she remained directly in his path. Already Yang was sprinting toward her, pushing with her gauntlets’ recoil to return faster to her side, but even with the boost she could tell Ozpin was still closer. 

Salem had the same thoughts. Blake had her Semblance to dodge attacks, but would that be enough against the sword of Destruction? She could flash away to somewhere else, but so far she seemed frozen in place. Salem rushed forward to grab Blake by the shoulders, and twisted the pair of them around to place her own body in the way of the golden blade. The Relic pierced through her upper back and emerged on the other side, but Salem only grabbed the protruding tip and pulled it farther as she dropped to her knees in shock. 

Yang arrived barely a second later, if even that, and crashed headlong into Ozpin’s side. His grip on the Relic’s handle broke and both tumbled to the ground, and Ozpin released a burst of magic all around to throw Yang off of him. He staggered back to his feet, but Salem was already up again as well, facing him with the Relic still stuck through her body. 

“I’m well past my own proper time, no matter whose definition you take,” she spat. “But I don’t have a say in the matter, and neither do you! Remember what your precious gods said: so long as this world turns, I shall walk its face!”

“But… the Relic, the – the gods’ power is…” Ozpin stammered and took a few slow steps back. 

“And you thought  _ that _ could kill me? The gods don’t  _ want _ me dead. That’s the whole point! If I’m dead, then I’m not suffering the way they designed.” Salem’s voice sounded far more confident than she actually felt. The last time she had been threatened with the Relic of Destruction she had believed it enough that she avoided Yang’s attacks, and though the next Yang after her had dispelled that notion, a slight doubt had still remained. Only now was the question finally put to rest, with the result Salem that had expected but couldn’t quite bring herself to test. 

She made a quick gesture to one side, and Eve took the signal to gently draw the golden blade out of Salem’s back. No wound was left behind, and no holes in her periwinkle dress, not even a drop of blood on the blade itself. The Relic turned itself to point upright and drifted through the air to rest in front of Xuri, and the Summer Maiden hesitated and made a face. But finally, she shifted her other weapon into her left hand alone, and reached out to claim it again. 

* * *

Taiyang Xiao Long sat down on the living room couch and flipped the TV on. He had just had to take down a small ursa that had wandered into the yard, but now that the area was clear again he needed both to rest and to check up on the world outside. Last he had seen, the White Fang had assaulted Amity Colosseum with captured Grimm during the final few matches of the day and an unfamiliar woman’s voice had come on to gloat over humanity’s unpreparedness, even going so far as to implicate Headmaster Ozpin in the attack. It certainly was convenient that his star pupil had forfeited her match just minutes before the alarms went off, but Tai could not possibly think there was a serious relation. 

He needed to see the news. Not sports reruns, not commercials, not the middle of some movie he’d never seen… the local news on channel four. VNN would have someone reporting live until this attack was all over. Right now they were showing some Huntresses in downtown Vale… except there didn’t seem to be any Grimm. And where was the reporter? Shouldn’t Lisa Lavender or one of her field reporters be on screen, or at least speaking over the video they were showing?

Wait. Was that… Yang? Tai leaned closer to the screen, but the perspective shifted suddenly to a new view and he took a moment to readjust to what he was seeing. That was definitely Yang, as well as Ozpin, in a battle with several others. The girl with the bow in her hair, she looked familiar as well. One of Ruby and Yang’s teammates. And also Xuri, another member of Ozpin’s inner circle alongside Qrow. 

Tai watched as his daughter called out the words “Summer Sun!” and proceeded to lead Xuri in a devastating coordinated assault… on Ozpin? That couldn’t be right. His eyes flicked around the screen and came to rest on the last two women, the ones he didn’t recognize. One in black, who moved with military precision. One in lavender, with white hair as long as Yang’s cascading down her back. 

It couldn’t be. Not here. But the white hair and even whiter skin… the veins covering her arms and the sides of her face… the pinkish light at her fingertips that could only be described as magic… This woman matched the description Ozpin had always given Team Stark of their greatest adversary. 

For many years Tai and his team had fought against the forces of chaos and destruction as Ozpin’s warriors and spies, those who knew the truth about the world and about the dangers it faced. After Raven had renounced all of that duty and fled back to her tribe, things were harder. After Summer had gone on assignment and never come back, it became unbearable. Tai retired to raise his daughters alone, and he had vowed not to let them get swept up in the same eternal war as he had. 

And now, that war had come practically to his front door. To the middle of Vale, in the same year Ruby and Yang began their studies at Beacon. Tai had never liked keeping his daughters in the dark and many times he had sat up late at night, contemplating just how to phrase the revelations, only to reconsider again before morning came. Right now, he regretted having never said a word. Yang was involved whether he liked it or not, and it certainly looked like she was fighting for the wrong side. 

Tai sat up sharply as an idea came to him. Qrow would know what to do. Qrow was the last member of the old team who still worked closely with Oz. Tai fumbled in his pocket for his scroll and muted the fight on TV, and scrolled with trembling fingers to find Qrow’s contact and call him. 

The line rang several times and Tai almost closed his scroll again, assuming Qrow was probably busy fighting somewhere, but then the connection went through. “Tai,” came his teammate’s voice on the other end. “Wasn’t sure I’d hear from you tonight. Also, just for the record, it feels  _ real _ weird to get an incoming call while I’m a bird.”

“I imagine so.” Tai laughed briefly, then got serious again. “How is everything out there? What’s going on? I turned on the news and all it’s showing is a fight downtown, and Yang is there, and–”

“And Salem. I know.” Qrow interrupted Tai’s frantic words, and walked to the edge of the rooftop where he had landed to peer off toward the plaza a block down the street. “It’s a long story, okay? Just calm down. Yang’s a big girl now and she knows what she’s doing.”

“That really is  _ her? _ Here in Vale? Fighting Ozpin as we speak?” Tai’s voice rose in volume, and there was movement in the doorway as Zwei trotted in to see what the fuss was about. “What is Yang doing helping  _ her?” _

“Like I said, long story. You weren’t there. Did you know your daughter is the Spring Maiden now?”

“She’s  _ what? _ How? I thought you lost track of Spring years ago!” Tai leaned in close to the TV again and waited for it to show a good view of Yang, only to see that Qrow was right. Yang’s eyes were rimmed with pink, and as Tai watched, she halted a blast of energy from Ozpin’s cane with nothing but an outstretched hand. 

An outstretched  _ metal _ hand. “What happened to her arm?” Tai demanded. “That looks like a state of the art Atlas prosthetic. She was  _ fine _ when she and Ruby visited home a month ago! Nobody’s mentioned  _ losing an arm!” _

“Shhhh… Calm down, Tai. It’s fine.”

_ “How can it be fine?” _

“Shhhhhhhhhh. Just watch. She’s not using her Semblance to win every match anymore. She fights smarter now, without that arm. And with who she’s hanging around with these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could turn that metal back into flesh.”

Tai stood up from the couch and started pacing back and forth across the room. The moment he was up, Zwei jumped onto the end of the couch and walked down to settle in the same spot Tai had just vacated. “So that really is Salem?” Tai asked, trying hard to keep his voice under control but not quite managing to calm himself. “Tell me everything you know about what’s going on over there. Long story or not.”

Qrow made a noncommittal grunt. “What I know covers two years and even then it might be incomplete. I’ll start in the middle.” There was a brief pause over the line as Qrow transformed to fly to a different rooftop, where he could get a better view of the fight. “First thing to know is, that’s all four Maidens down there, with Salem, plus two or three Relics too. Practically all the magic in the world. Yang is Spring, Blake is Fall. Ruby’s around here somewhere too, using her silver eyes on every Grimm she sees. Did you see that big dragon go down a while ago? That was her.”

“She can use her eyes?” Tai stopped short in his pacing. But – but Summer always said–”

“It activates on the desire to protect others, that’s all,” Qrow explained. “You don’t have to actually see someone die first. Ruby’s a better Huntress than either of us will ever be, but that’s beside the point. You want to know about Oz and Salem.”

“Yes. Please.” Tai tried to sit down again but Zwei would not budge, so he settled for a spot next to the dog instead where he could still watch the ongoing battle while Qrow spoke. 

“Well, what you need to understand is…” Qrow let out a long groan. “They’ve both gone insane, but in opposite directions. Suddenly Salem’s trying to redeem herself, and Ozpin is… well, he’s… let’s just say, he’s not quite putting the people of Remnant first anymore. Listen to him now and you can tell it’s more personal than anything. The kids all decided they’d help Salem and try to keep her on the right track. That’s what really pushed old Oz over the edge.”

“That’s…” Tai struggled for words. “That’s not good, Qrow. Do they  _ know _ what she is?”

“Oh, yeah. They know  _ everything. _ Way more than Oz ever told you or me. Remember what he said to us? We were the ones he trusted. The team he could tell the full truth to. Remember?” Qrow paused and imagined Tai nodding along. “Bullshit, all of it! He didn’t tell us a  _ tenth _ of what he could have. What he  _ should _ have, if we were to have any chance. He’s never had a real plan at all. He’s been making it up as he goes along, all while sending the rest of us out to die along the way.”

“Wait, wait, hold on. Where is all this coming from? What happened between you? And you said Salem wants to redeem herself? That sounds a little hard to believe.”

“Yeah, well, believe it.” Qrow sat down on the corner of the rooftop, still watching the battle a block away. “Ruby and Yang can tell you the full story once tonight is over. The Relic of Choice is involved. Some of us have seen this night before, and this is the do-over. And trust me, whatever you see tonight, this is the  _ good _ timeline. This is the version where we  _ don’t _ lose two students and the CCT tower.”

Tai seemed almost stunned into silence.  _ That’s _ what the Relic of Choice did? Ozpin had always been a little more cryptic about that one than the others. “So… wait. This is a lot.” Tai picked up the TV remote and turned the volume up two clicks. “I’m still a little hung up on the fact that my daughters are even involved in all this. And then that Yang is apparently fighting alongside Salem. Are you seeing all this too? Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m right by them,” came the response. “I flew in close at first to get a good look at the situation, maybe see if I could help out, but… There’s five of them to one of Oz, so my luck would do way more harm than good. Not a minute after I showed up, Oz got the sword away from that Faunus girl with the tail. Can’t be sure it was me, but it seems too bad to be true, you know? So I backed off. I’m on a roof nearby.”

“You should have seen a little while ago,” Qrow continued. “Oz with the Relic of Destruction is a monster. He nearly killed that poor zebra girl, and  _ did _ kill the one with the ring around her head. They brought her back, but you can see the body’s still there. He might’ve got Blake too, if Salem hadn’t taken the hit for her.”

“That’s…” Tai was at a loss for words once again. “I think I just need to watch. Thanks, Qrow.”

“Actually, you know what?” Qrow said. “Give Ruby a call. I haven’t seen a Grimm around here in a while, and it doesn’t get much more negative than a bunch of people trying to kill each other. I bet she’s run out of targets too, and she’ll be heading back up to Beacon soon. Anyway, you mind if I crash at your place tonight? I can fly to Patch in a half hour.” Without waiting for an answer, Qrow hung up and pocketed his scroll. He pushed off the edge of the building, and in a burst of magic spread his wings again and flew away. 

* * *

“Bumblebee!” 

Yang was in the air almost before the word had left her mouth. This was by far the most practiced of any of her current team’s combos, built on years of trust, able to be performed backwards or forwards at a moment’s notice. Yang could feel herself being pushed along slightly by Eve as she half ran, half flew at the end of Blake’s ribbon, making a wide semicircle around one end of the plaza toward where Ozpin was still, trading magical attacks at a distance with Salem and Xuri. 

Ozpin glanced over to watch her progress, but remained where he was to catch an incoming blast of fuchsia and point it back out again. He knew what Bumblebee was. He’d seen it used countless times in team training, and later against Grimm in his group’s travels. And still he waited in place until the very last moment, before thrusting an empty hand toward Xuri and activating another of his many Semblances. 

In an instant, Ozpin and Xuri swapped places, and Xuri blinked in surprise and twisted away as Yang flew toward her. Yang lowered her fist and tried her best to slow down, only to be met by a wave onward from Xuri. She nodded and brought her arm back up, trusting in her teammate just half a pace outside her path, and the instant Yang flew by, Xuri reached out to make contact and both blinked across the battlefield. 

The pair emerged back where Xuri had been taken from a moment before. Where Ozpin still was, after swapping their positions. And even though no momentum was carried along through the jump, Yang was still armed and ready with a magic-enhanced punch to deliver into Ozpin’s side. 

Ozpin was knocked to the ground, but rolled quickly back to his feet and swung his free hand back toward Yang and Xuri in retaliation. Xuri kept her hand on Yang’s shoulder and teleported them back out of the way again, but she almost didn’t need to. The burst of dark green from Ozpin’s palm sputtered and barely reached his target, and the followup wave from the end of his cane fizzled out before it had traveled five feet. 

“Ha! He’s run out of magic!” Salem exclaimed, and the spray of sparks from Ozpin’s hand that came in place of a green laser only reinforced her assessment. “He really did give most of his capacity away!” She launched a volley of magenta and jeered him directly. “How are all those spies and paladins working out for you now, old man? All those slivers wasted over the centuries! Even the tiniest drop, multiplied by eternity, is more use than enhancing a mortal can ever be!”

Ozpin jabbed his cane forward again, but nothing came out. The purple right wing on his back flickered, and both it and the golden stump beside it faded into wisps of light in the air. “Don’t think I’m helpless,” he snarled at the five women opposing him. “I still have thousands of years of Huntsman training!  _ And _ a little something that doesn’t rely on me to power it!” He clicked the trigger on his weapon to shorten it to half its normal length and then flipped it through the air to catch the other end, transforming the cane into a wand. 

He stabbed at the air with his new weapon and a crack of pure white shot from its tip, forcing Eve to leap out of the way. Space itself rippled around the edge of the gap and colors bled into the blank emptiness from all around, until a few seconds later the rift fell in on itself under the weight of a more solid existence, and closed without a trace. 

Repeated tears through the fabric of reality kept everyone on their toes, constantly moving, never letting Ozpin keep his aim toward anyone for more than an instant. No one dared get close to him lest he move quicker than expected and open a new vault door across their body, and so the team resorted to attacks at range with their own magic and the Relics. It was easy to get used to the godly power being released over and over, almost like bolts of lightning except oddly silent, bright lines of light without any boom of thunder to follow them. 

But even under the team’s bombardment from afar, Ozpin had been correct that he was not defenseless, for he still retained control of countless Semblances. He tucked the divine wand beneath one arm and slammed his open hands together, and a shockwave rippled out in all directions. The wand was back in his hand in an instant, aimed at Yang, currently the nearest of his opponents. 

All five witches stumbled under the unavoidable shock and Yang barely had time to register that the sphere of nothingness was pointed her way before Ozpin forced open another crack in the world. Yang lurched to the side and the line of white missed her chest by inches. A clatter drew her attention downward as the fissure closed again, and she was startled to see a yellow metal forearm laying by her feet. The other end of her prosthetic was still attached near her shoulder, but the region around her elbow had been lost somewhere in the endless desert underlying the foundations of the world. 

“Hey! No one gets to take my arm off except me or Blake!” Yang was more indignant than hurt, as luckily her metal stump felt no pain. She briefly debated picking up the remaining piece and holding it in place with magic, but decided she could just as well fight with one hand. 

A short ways off, Eve whispered something into Salem’s ear: not one of the specific team attacks they had come up with beforehand, but an idea that could function as one anyway. Salem nodded once, and both backed off to stand near one corner of the plaza, at the edge of the stairs up to the city. 

She raised the Relic of Creation and a rapid fire stream of small mirrors flew out to hang in the air all over the square. Salem pointed all around herself with no particular thought given to her aim, trying only to send out as many fuchsia lasers as she could manage. Each one was intercepted by a carefully controlled mirror and redirected, some to rain down on Ozpin’s head directly, others sent to bounce around between mirrors a while longer to strike from an unexpected direction. 

After the first few hits continued to track him even despite his attempts to dodge, Ozpin jumped into the air and switched on another defensive Semblance. A thin sphere appeared around him as he hovered motionless a few inches off the ground, pulsing faintly with each hit it absorbed and growing a shade brighter in the same pink of Salem’s magic. Eve stopped reflecting shots down at him, opting instead to bounce them back and forth between her mirrors even as Salem continued to supply more.

Ozpin extended his cane to its full length again and tapped the inside of his sphere with its tip. The pink was absorbed into the weapon all the way up to the handle and Ozpin dropped to the ground, and he immediately slashed toward Blake to release the stored energy in a single tall wave. 

Despite the similarity between this Semblance and Adam’s, Blake did not let herself freeze as her body instinctively wanted to do. She flashed off to the side to land near Yang, and the arc of pink sliced through her shadow clone left behind and continued on to melt a wide channel into the steps beyond. 

The remaining beams that Eve had stored between her mirrors shot down one by one to hit Ozpin from all sides. He blocked a handful with his cane, but the barrage was relentless and focused itself onto his back no matter which way he turned. Ultimately he gave up on blocking and performed another switch-teleport on Salem, only to have the final few blasts follow him anyway. 

Standing right next to Eve now, he hurried to get his cane turned back the other way. All the mirrors dropped from the air as Eve switched her focus, shattering into thousands of glass shards over most of the square. Eve poured her magic instead into manipulating Ozpin’s body, abandoning precision in the name of speed to shove him to the side just in time to misdirect the gash he tore in the world. As the gap zipped closed again, stone from the steps above crumbled into the channel it left behind, further damaging them as well as part of the street above. 

“Silver Dragon!” Yang called, already sprinting toward Eve and Ozpin’s position. Eve retreated from Ozpin as he was standing up again, and focused her telekinesis again on his arms and legs. Ozpin’s fingers opened against his will and the wand he held clattered to the ground, leaving him without much offensive power for as long as his magic was depleted. All his limbs locked in place as Eve set him up for a strong hit from Yang. 

There was a horrible cracking, squelching sound and suddenly there were two Ozpins, one standing just where he had been and the other stumbling backwards from that position. The new one tripped on the bottom step and tipped over, incidentally avoiding a strike of lightning from Xuri’s silver sword just by virtue of falling down. Yang and her gauntleted fist slammed into the copy Eve held and almost passed straight through as it crumpled beneath her, a quarter inch thick shed skin folding in on itself to stick like flypaper all over Yang’s arm. 

“Oh, ew! That is  _ disgusting! _ ” Yang exclaimed, backing away as she shook her arm vigorously. She reached out to brush at it with her other arm only to remember it was no longer there, and finally looked to Eve to help separate her from the sticky molt. Meanwhile, Ozpin called up what tiny bit of magic had regenerated in the past minute to pull his weapon back into his hand. He pointed across the square to Xuri and swapped places with her, and scrambled back to his feet again. 

“Blake! Sharp Shadow!” Salem yelled to her teammate, and held out one hand. A black gun flew toward her and she caught it easily, and willed her magic to spread down the ribbon attached to its handle. The ribbon took on an outline of white down its length, and those holding its ends looked forward to their target as Salem began a countdown. “Five, four, three–”

They went on three. The countdown was part of the move, partly to coordinate the pair’s magic with precision, but also designed to strike their enemy off guard. Blake and Salem both flashed forward with a trail of lightning in their wake, aiming to either side of Ozpin so that the ribbon between them swept through a long rectangle at blinding speed. 

Ozpin was caught unprepared, with his scroll in hand as he glanced at his Aura monitor. Somewhere in the milliseconds between Salem and Blake’s departure and their arrival at the other end, the ribbon pulled against his midsection and stretched as much as it was able, before snapping taut again. Ozpin doubled over as he was launched backwards all the way across the plaza, and his Aura took more damage from the impact onto the steps behind him than from the magic-infused ribbon itself. 

“Eve, the scroll!” Salem followed the device with her gaze as it flew from Ozpin’s hand and arced up to the street level above. Eve floated up into the air herself to keep sight of it, and after a moment of concentration on the small and distant form, managed to pull it closer. “Not to me,” Salem called to her as the scroll floated her way. “You keep it! You have better pockets!” 

Ozpin was standing halfway up the steps, facing down at the team arrayed before him. He held out his wand all the way to one side, and swung his entire arm over his head and down the other side. A semicircle of brilliant white followed where he pointed, twenty feet out where it nearly touched the edges of the lowered square, and it continued its trace into the ground beneath Ozpin’s feet as he turned and took one step down toward his opponents. In the same motion he turned back around with a second step downward, and pulled the wand from behind him into a forward thrust as if throwing something from the tip. 

The circle of blankness leaking into the world rushed forth at its master’s command, stretching across the square as a wall of nothing until Ozpin tilted his wand up to halt its progress. The ends of the cylinder closed in with white as well, and all six within its bounds felt their stomachs flip as the center of Armistice Square was wrenched out of its place on Remnant. 

Salem and the four Maidens found themselves under an empty sky, bright without a sun, on an island of stone amidst a sea of yellow sand. Stairs led up only to a drop back to the ground on all sides. Wisps of color drifted upward off the edges of everyone’s clothing and skin and faded into the white above, matched only by a single plume of blue rising from somewhere beyond the horizon. 

Ozpin swept down from the stairs with his weapon already extending back into a cane. “Let’s see how you like it here!” he proclaimed, and ran toward Blake as his nearest mortal target. 

“Magic doesn’t work here!” Salem called to her team as she looked down as her unresponsive fingers. 

“Aura still does!” Blake yelled. She was locked in one on one combat with Ozpin and her Semblance saved her from many of his strikes, but Ozpin was terrifyingly fast and it was all Blake could do to merely protect herself without attacking back. 

“Xuri!” Everyone converged on the zebra Faunus to put a hand on her shoulders or back. Only Blake could not quite get away safely from Ozpin’s reckless assault, and she was knocked down by a heavy blow of his cane as she turned to disengage. Blake rolled through the shards of glass still littering the plaza and clasped one hand around Xuri’s ankle while Ozpin charged at the group with his cane held in both hands like a club, and his swing whiffed through air as the group vanished under the power of Xuri’s Semblance. 

The five reappeared in Vale, but the ground did not return with them. They dropped a few feet onto a semicircular hollow in the dirt where Ozpin’s divine artifact had excised the plaza from its surroundings, and Salem quickly put Xuri to work deleting earth with the sword to flatten it out again. There was no sign of Ozpin, but as long as he held that wand, he could reappear at any moment. 

“How’s everyone holding up?” Salem asked. 

“Not good,” Yang replied first. “Aura’s at six percent, and I’ve got no metal arm to block with anymore. I can take another hit or maybe two and then I’m down.”

“Mine went down just now,” Blake said. “With my regen I can get a couple Semblance dodges each minute, but that’s nothing. You should get ready to do what you did for Eve again.”

“I hope we don’t need to,” Salem told her. “Eve, what’s Ozpin’s Aura like? Must be getting low if he’s checking his scroll to be sure.” 

“One point eight percent,” the Winter Maiden reported. “Multiply that by about twenty to compare him to a normal person, but that’s still not a lot.”

“Good.” Salem nodded. “Blake, you’ll be fine.”

On the other side of reality, Ozpin was on his knees in the center of the displaced square. He held the wand with its orb of nothingness up toward the matching white sky and once again cried out the two names known only to him and to the lamp he had once asked. “Why do you forsake your servant?” he asked to the emptiness. “Your gaze is vast and your power limitless, but I was chosen! You sent me back here for a reason and I have been trying my hardest to stop Salem and bring about your return!”

He stared up at the void a moment longer, but no figures of purple and gold descended to greet him. “I admit, it has taken me too long to call upon you. I was once enticed by her as you warned, but I broke free! I have prevented her from bending the world to her rule! But I have suffered setbacks, so it is now more essential than ever that you return to our world and set things straight!”

The blank sky only mocked him with its silence. “Do I mean that little to you?” he challenged, finally standing up again. “I know I don’t have all four Relics, but that’s precisely why the world needs you now! Brothers, help me!” He slashed open a new portal back to Remnant, but waited before stepping through. “Or was this your plan all along? To lie to me, set me on an impossible task, and watch from afar as I die over and over for nothing!”

Ozpin stepped backwards across the rift and continued yelling through it. “You’ve always known this planet was irredeemable! Haven’t you?” His adversaries watched without interrupting the deranged shouting, as Ozpin twisted the end cap of his cane and popped the white sphere out into his other hand. “As long as Salem lives, this world will never know the peace you demand, and yet you refuse to bring it to an end!”

He cast the rest of the cane down by his side, and used the sphere alone to seal the crack in space before yelling up to the sky, “Useless gods! Do I have to do everything myself?!”

Ozpin grasped the ball of unreality tightly and thrust his fist up over his head. Cracks of white shot out one after the other, in every direction except down into Ozpin himself, lengthening and branching in sharp spurts like a pure white tree taking shape with Ozpin as the trunk. 

“Oh, that’s really not good…” Salem muttered. Her teammates looked to her with apprehension, unsure how or even if they could try to stop Ozpin’s destruction. Salem waved them forward while taking a few steps back herself. “Yang, Eve – Falling Star!” 

“Are you kidding me?” Yang asked. “There’s no way I’ll survive passing through that!”

“No one I care about is dying on my watch,” Salem promised. “We can stop him, but you have to do it  _ now!” _

Yang frowned and exhaled slowly through her nose, and nodded once. She enabled her Semblance for the first time of the fight, at its most powerful now with her Aura almost completely down, and looked to Eve. She opened her mouth to speak, but before the words came out she was launched high into the air with Eve’s powerful telekinesis. A short ways across the pit where a plaza had once been, the tears in reality began bleeding into one another, and each bit of space that was enclosed quickly crumbled as well into white. 

“Blake, Xuri – Needlepoint, hard! You know where!” Salem spurred her other two teammates into action together. The timing had to be precise: not too soon before Yang plummeted down again or else Ozpin might avoid her, but not too late or else everyone would be in danger of the world collapsing around them. 

Cracks spread faster with each passing moment, jumping six or eight feet at a time now, the furthest beginning to pass between those three Maidens who remained on the ground. Blake had to duck under one to get to Xuri’s side, and held her by the shoulders as she sheathed the silver blade and readied only the Relic in its place. Far above, Yang’s flight slowed and she began to fall. 

The light over the square winked out as Salem’s miniature false sun fell victim to one of the gaping rips, but above it Yang herself provided some illumination from the thick coating of white flames over her body. She dropped with her one remaining arm held ready, glowing like a meteor as she fell toward Ozpin far below. 

Blake concentrated on her magic, thankfully not dependent on her depleted Aura, and Xuri held out the Relic of Destruction in preparation. Neither said a word about aim or readiness, for both knew exactly what was needed from them. Someone cried out from behind them but it was too late to look back, they were already flashing forward in twin arcs of lightning, and their unspoken coordination struck true. 

The golden sword cleaved through Ozpin’s upraised arm just above the shoulder, severing his connection to the font of godly power. In an instant Blake and Xuri blinked back to where they had stood, but with Ozpin no longer commanding his divine gift to erase Remnant from existence, they hardly needed to. The white fissures shrank back and sealed themselves back into normal space as fast as the eye could follow, leaving the ground and the buildings on all sides to collapse in on themselves as their erased supports failed to return. 

Ozpin froze in shock and could only stare down at the stump of his arm, and the hand still clenched tight around the white sphere laying by his feet. Not a second later, Yang fell through the space once occupied by a web of deadly cracks and channeled all her built up magic through her fist as she slammed it down onto the top of Ozpin’s head. Both crumpled to the ground, but only Yang staggered to her feet again. 

Blake ran over to tackle her into a tight hug. Yang returned the gesture as well as possible with her one arm, until a call from Salem drew them both back to see the last effect of Ozpin’s desperate gambit. 

Salem lay on the ground with a massive hole through her midsection where she had found herself in the way of a fissure in the world. Eve knelt beside her, one hand on Salem’s forehead and the other pressed to her own stomach, the Relic of Creation sitting beside her in the dirt. 

“Don’t worry about me,” Salem said, seeing the horrified looks on Blake and Yang’s faces. “He didn’t kill me outright so I doubt I can die of this later. We need to get Ozpin back to Beacon immediately. Eve, go make sure he’s really out.”

“Are you sure?” Eve asked in a strained voice. “This hurts quite a bit, you know.”

“Go,” Salem ordered again, and Eve broke off the use of her Semblance and went to check Ozpin’s pulse and breathing. Salem wheezed with the sudden reappearance of her pain, but managed to continue speaking. “One of you, take the Relic and create two stretchers. I sent Xuri to take down the broadcast equipment already.”

“Two?” Blake picked up the scepter and turned it over in her hands. “Can’t you just use the Relic of Choice to undo getting hurt?”

“I can and I will, but not yet. Not until Ozpin is properly contained, at least.”

Yang gave a few words of instruction to Blake about the scepter, and two simple stretchers appeared on the ground soon after. Eve returned with Ozpin levitating beside her, and she laid him down on one and gently picked up Salem to place her on the other. “Ozpin is alive,” she reported. “He currently feels no pain, suggesting he is truly unconscious and not faking it. I have confiscated his weapon and placed… whatever that was… back into it.”

“Good. Lift us out of here.” Salem gave the word and she and Ozpin were both raised up from the pit, with Salem’s stretcher handed off to Yang and Blake at the top. Yang struggled slightly with only one arm, but managed to hold Salem steady. Xuri returned from deleting cameras and took up the other end of Ozpin’s stretcher, while Eve held her end with magic and took back the Relic of Creation. 

Eve faced toward the hole and concentrated, with such singular focus that her magic flickered and Xuri set Ozpin down to make sure he wasn’t dropped. The bare earth at the bottom rose up and filled in more of itself, and when it reached its previous level it was capped with a single massive slab of the polished purple-black stone that much of Salem’s castle was made of. Eve paused with the Relic still up and thought for a long moment, and then five life-sized statues popped into existence on a shared base near the far end of the square, each a mix of the same black with matching white marble, with name plates at their feet. 

“There. I’ve taken the liberty of saving Vale a few million lien in construction costs. We can go.” An Atlesian airship appeared on the plaza nearby, and Eve finally lowered the scepter and led the way into the ship’s central cargo hold. The rest of the team followed, and Eve took the pilot seat and lifted off to return to Beacon. 

* * *

“Is that everyone?” Jaune glanced around at the group assembled deep below Beacon Tower. It had taken several trips in the single small elevator to get everyone into the vault, especially with two people unable to stand, but finally the whole group was united again in the dim marble halls. “I’m glad to see you all made it out okay,” he said. “It’s been a tough night for all of us, but we did it.”

“I’m going to need another arm,” Yang commented, “but that’s easy enough with the Relic. Lucky Oz hit that one and not the other side.” 

“And I feel like I could sleep for a month,” Ruby said, leaning on Weiss’s shoulder as she walked. “Silver eyes are exhausting, but I couldn’t just  _ stop _ , you know? Not while there were still Grimm around.” 

“Tell me about it,” Weiss grumbled. “I’ve probably done more summoning tonight than the whole rest of my life combined. Jaune was a great help, but still…”

Jaune pulled his scroll out of his pocket and glanced at his Aura indicator. “I’m mostly drained, actually. I’m happy to be you guys’s battery, but no more tonight, please. I just hope I have enough left to heal Pyrrha.” He looked over at Salem on the other stretcher, and the thick black cloth that was now wrapped around her stomach. “And speaking of healing… What happened to you? Do you need help too?”

“Ozpin came very close to proving Jinn wrong,” Salem said. “That’s what happened. That cane of his definitely had some extra tricks up its sleeve. Still, better me than someone mortal. Doctor Silver, what’s the prognosis for someone missing several internal organs and part of their spine?” 

Eve glared at her. “Once again, I was a vet, not a human doctor. If a cat came in with your injuries, I’d have it put down.”

“Good luck with that,” Salem said. “Maybe you’ll find a method I haven’t tried myself yet.” 

“You know,” Yang cut in, “Coco’s not going to be happy someone destroyed her favorite clothing store again. Better hope Choice fixes that too along with everything else.” 

“Penny!” Ruby’s voice interrupted them all with a new concern as she ran to her friend’s side. Penny still lay where she had fallen, with a huge gash in one side, showing no sign of consciousness despite the green lights around her body remaining on. “We need to get her back to Mantle, to her father. We know he can fix her.”

“We will,” Weiss promised her. “I’ll go with you and we can deal with my father while we’re there.”

“There’s Cinder over there,” Jaune pointed out. She too was sprawled on the floor near one wall, resting in a pool of blood that was only half her own, with one of Penny’s blades lodged in her chest and another on the floor beside her. 

The group walked past her without a second glance and came to the machine where Pyrrha rested, with her gruesome wound not dissimilar to the one Weiss had once suffered from the same hand. Jaune took up a spot right in front of the door so he could bring his healing hands to bear the instant it swung open, so his partner would not have a moment without the life support she needed. 

Ren pulled the chamber door open and helped Nora carry their teammate forward and out of the way, while Jaune kept his Semblance active throughout the whole movement. Once the space was clear, Eve lifted Ozpin’s unconscious form and levitated him into the machine in Pyrrha’s place, and Xuri vanished the empty stretcher with her golden sword. 

“There we go. Let him chill in there for a while, where he can’t be a danger to anyone.”

Salem held up one finger and Eve stopped to listen. “I’ll want to check with Goodwitch, or even General Ironwood, to make sure that machine can keep him dormant like that. Amber may have slept for months, but Ozpin is not as badly hurt. Regardless, the world is safe for now. How is Pyrrha?”

Jaune knelt over Pyrrha to one side, his hands hovering just an inch over her bloodied armor. The glow that surrounded her body was still white, still entirely Jaune’s Aura rather than her own, but her breathing was steady. Xuri knelt to her other side with the sword discarded behind her. Her eyes glowed green and she ran her hands over Pyrrha’s armor and skin, ignoring the strange look Jaune gave her, then after a moment she stopped and pulled away. 

Xuri placed two fingers to Pyrrha’s neck and slipped her other hand beneath Jaune’s. The area around Pyrrha’s wound glowed green to match the flares from Xuri’s eyes, and within seconds her flesh knitted together again as if it had never been any other way. The Aura covering her body faded from white into red, and Pyrrha’s eyes flickered and sprang open. 

“What did you do…?” Jaune asked, incredulous, as both he and Xuri pulled their hands back and helped Pyrrha sit up. 

Salem also watched with amazement. “You have healing magic?” 

Xuri stood up so she could face Salem directly, and blinked the green rings away. “Yeah, Ozpin taught me as part of my training. Is something wrong?”

“You have got to teach me everything you know. Healing is the one area I’ve never been able to figure out. My own teachers only ever taught me illusion and showmanship, the kind of magic that would let my father marry me off to someone advantageous to him. Then later all I focused on was offensive battle magic – because I was immortal, and I had to do a lot of killing to keep the Relics apart. But if I had known how to do what you just did…”

Salem’s voice trailed off as she thought through just how different the world would have been. The Yang she had come to love could have lived. Her problem with Blake would have remained, but with a second chance maybe the three of them could have come to a resolution. Even now, she wouldn’t mind sharing with Yang’s other partner. But if the other one had lived, Salem might not have met Team Juniper and the younger Ozpin, might not have resurrected Pyrrha or even found out that restoring magic to the world was possible. Maybe the current world was better, in the long run.

Pyrrha pulled out of Jaune’s tight embrace and looked around the gathering. “Is it over?” she asked. “Jaune, can you heal her too?”

“It’s over,” Ren confirmed. “We’re all safe. Salem is… well, she’s not in danger of dying.”

“Don’t even try to heal me. Not even with magic.” Salem waved Xuri away. “I’m about to fix this a different way. But since I can’t currently move or feel my legs... Eve, could you please retrieve the Relic of Choice for me?” She pointed down at one thigh and a moment later the crown floated out from the bottom of her dress.

Eve propped Salem up to a reclining position and placed the Relic on her head. “Sophia!” Salem called. “Include everyone here.” She glanced around at the group. “Actually, I don’t want to risk making anything weird. Sophia, can you include literally every person on Remnant?”

“That’s an interesting choice,” the Relic spirit commented. “But yes. It is done.”

“Good. At the end of my fight with Ozpin just now, he chose to attempt to erase the world as the gods would in the case of a negative judgement. If I ask you to undo that choice, and instead have him continue to fight as he had been, would that result in Ozpin still being contained in this machine?”

“Nothing is certain,” Sophia said, “but I do choose the closest timeline, with life and location my highest priorities. You could ask Jinn for a probability, but my own estimate says yes.”

“Alright. Do it. That’s the choice I want.”

Sophia raised one eyebrow and slowly looked around the group. “Everyone?” Ten nods and yeses answered her. “Okay then.”

Sophia vanished, along with the stretcher Salem had been carried here on. Salem was standing now, the crown back atop her head, with no damage to either her body or her clothes. Apart from that, nothing else was different.

“Oh, good. I’m not paralyzed from the waist down anymore. That would have been an annoying way to spend eternity.” Salem looked over at Ozpin, still locked in the stasis chamber. “And however it happened in this timeline, we still beat him. You four, check that you’re all still Maidens.”

They were. Either nobody had died in the new version of the fight, or they had had their powers restored by force as had been the case for Eve.

“So what do we do now?” Jaune asked.

“We contact Pietro,” Ruby said. “Does anyone have his number?”

Several people pulled out their scrolls, but it was no use. “Not in this timeline,” Yang said. “And I didn’t memorize it.”

“You’ll get no signal down here anyway,” Salem told them all. “We should head back up. You can get his number from General Ironwood, or I can get it from Doctor Watts.”

“Watts?” Nora asked as they walked. “Didn’t he, like, betray you? Ren and I fought him earlier.” As the group passed by the intersection of the cavernous halls, Ruby and Weiss picked up Penny’s dormant form between them. Eve gathered her swords along with Cinder’s body, just to keep the vault clean. 

“He did, but he doesn’t know I know that yet. And when I tell him…” Salem laughed. “I can’t wait to hear that bastard squirm.”

“Sorry, who’s Watts?” Pyrrha was still a little behind.

“Tall guy, wears purple, insults everyone he meets. He worked on Atlas security back in the day and wrote all sorts of backdoors into it.” Salem already had her scroll out and ready the moment she stepped out of Beacon Tower, dialing her disloyal lieutenant. 

The line rang only once before Watts picked up. “Yes, Your Grace?”

“Watts. Are you still in Atlas?”

“I am, Your Grace. Do you have an assignment for me?”

“Not yet, but I may have need of you soon. Remain there for now. At the moment, all I need is contact information for Doctor Pietro Polendina.”

“Pietro…” There was an unmistakable note of hatred in Watts’s voice. “If I might ask, ma’am, what do you need with him? If you intend to lead him into a trap, I can much more easily arrange for him to have an accident from here. I’m sure I can reverse-engineer any of his machines to kill him. Even the girl.”

“That’s none of your concern,” Salem said icily. “Don’t contact him yourself, just give me his number and I will take care of what I need to.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Watts rattled off a phone number and Salem repeated it back to him, motioning for others to copy it down as she spoke. 

“Thank you, Watts. That will be all.” Salem hung up and turned back to her new team. “I’ll let him think he got away with it for now. One of you, call up Penny’s father and tell him the news.”

Ruby raised her hand to volunteer and wandered off to one side of the group. Jaune followed, ready to lend his support as an eyewitness to what had happened, leaving the rest to chat amongst themselves while they waited. 

“So, Salem…” Ren began. “I called my cousin earlier. I know you were interested in her for… for the future. She’s prepared to meet all of us as soon as we can get out to her village.”

“Oh! That’s very good.” Salem was pleasantly surprised with the boy’s proactiveness. “We can rest up for a day or so, and then head north. I do still have a promise to keep here before we leave.”

She was met with confused looks, until suddenly Yang’s face lit up. “Right! I almost forgot.” Yang smirked at her friends. “Salem’s going to publicly confess to all her meddling of the past few centuries. That was the deal for her getting to show the world our fight with Ozpin. Remnant sees the good and the bad together.”

“That’s right,” Salem confirmed. “And it’s going to be a long list. But I did say I would.” She glanced up as Ruby and Jaune returned from their conversation with Pietro. “I just have one question before we all go collapse into bed and think about how we’re going to hide from reporters tomorrow. Why are you all still here? With me, I mean. The battle is over and you’ve all won. I would hope by now you’re satisfied that I really do intend to make the world a better place from now on, but that doesn’t excuse all the horrible things I did before. There’s nothing stopping you from just walking away.”

Ruby spoke up first in response. “You’re right,” she said. “Changed or not, none of us  _ has _ to forgive you for the past. But seeing how many from your team abandoned you tonight, I’m willing to accept that much of the pain they caused us was their own doing, not yours.”

“Especially Cinder,” Jaune said. “Here, Haven, Atlas… She was just so twisted up inside with nothing but hatred. I’m not surprised she refused your order to stop killing. And I’m glad she’s gone.”

Weiss stepped up to offer her own words. “I’m satisfied that you’re making an effort.” She extended a hand, and Salem shook it and bowed her head. “And as long as that’s the case, you’re a valuable person to have around. We all know how badly this night could have gone without your help. I may not ever  _ forgive _ you, but that doesn’t have to stop me from fighting alongside you. But someone has to keep you accountable and make sure you’re  _ still _ making that effort to be good. If I ever find out you’re not – even if it’s a thousand years from now, I will  _ personally _ drag myself out of the afterlife and stab you again until you cooperate.”

“Thank you, Weiss. You have my full permission to stab me if I ever become too evil again.”

“I think what we’re all trying to say here,” Yang told her, “is that you’re stuck with us. If you want to be a new protector of Remnant, that’s great. If you want to do a better job of it than Ozpin, the bar’s not very high. But part of being better than him is not going it alone. You know the drill. No secrets, no lies or half-truths, have some gods-damned  _ trust _ in others. This is our world as much as yours or his. We’re in this together.”

Salem smiled, and nodded along as Yang spoke. “And without the threat of the gods returning, it truly can be  _ our _ world. I won’t let Remnant down. Now let’s all get some rest.”

“Ugh,  _ finally!” _ Nora exclaimed. “I’m practically falling asleep on my feet here! Who’s ready for a throwback to our Beacon dorm room days?”

“I am feeling rather jetlagged,” Ren said, as the crowd began moving in the direction of the student housing. “It was nine or ten at night when we made the time jump, and when we landed it was not quite five. I’m surprised we all made it this long without crashing.”

Several groans answered him as people realized just how tired they were, now that the adrenaline of fighting was beginning to wear off. “I for one can’t wait,” Yang said. “We’ve got eight beds for our teams, but I’m pretty sure the eight of us can fit into four these days. Salem, Xuri, Eve, there’s plenty of room for you too. Just… be careful with the bunk beds.” 


	16. Cycle 16: Sparks Igniting

“So you really had  _ nothing _ to do with the start of the Great War?” 

“Nope.” Salem answered Weiss’s question with a smile. “Mantle and Mistral did that all on their own. I did influence Vacuo though. They were on the fence and at first I was going to make them give in to the pressure and fight against Vale just to crush Ozpin’s pet kingdom, but I just couldn’t bring myself to back that side of the war. You can’t make people stop feeling emotions. Believe me, I’ve tried it on myself, with much stronger measures than legal mandates. So I pushed Vacuo to join Vale instead, and rationalized it as making the fight more equal and therefore more destructive.”

At the sound of voices, Ruby wandered into the airship’s main cabin from where she had been staring out the front windows. “You know,” she said, “you didn’t  _ have _ to go back three thousand years there. I mean, who’s ever heard of the Kingdom of Pallain? Or how it self-destructed and fell to Grimm after someone killed the king and set off a power struggle between the nobles? Professor Oobleck never taught us any of that!”

“I’m sure Doctor Oobleck and his fellow historians would have loved to hear more,” Ren spoke up from across the room. 

“And I could have given more,” Salem said. “I remember. I expect after my authenticity is confirmed, people will be calling on me more often than I’d like for historical knowledge, which is why I was so eager to get away from them all and fly out to the middle of nowhere.”

“Speaking of which…” Nora lifted her head from Ren’s lap and said the words feared by every driver on a multi-hour trip. “Are we there yet?”

Salem shrugged. “Go ask Eve. She’s the one flying this thing.”

Nora considered it, but decided she was more comfortable where she was. They’d been in the air for so long now, they had to be getting close. 

Jaune and Pyrrha wandered up from the back of the airship to join the growing crowd. “So, uh, Ren,” Jaune began. “This cousin of yours. You haven’t really said much about her.”

“Does he say much about anyone?” Nora interjected. “This is  _ Ren!” _

Ren only sighed lightly and turned to answer Jaune. “Nora and I haven’t seen my cousin in ten years, but she and her family were very kind to us. She’s two years older than us – well, she’s Nora’s age – likes tech and computers a lot, and I expect she’ll be very excited to meet everyone. For a while she wanted to be a Huntsman like her brother. Then she decided she’d rather be a Huntress. But in the end she stayed home to help the village with what informal training she gets from her father. Last I heard, her brother dropped out of Haven and went to study anthropology instead.” 

“Okay.” Jaune nodded along. “But I think you’re still leaving something out. What are we supposed to call her? How many names does she  _ have?” _

“That… is going to be an issue. There’s her birth name which I won’t say. It’s better if people don’t even know it. I  _ think _ she’s primarily going by Natasha now, after trying out some other names before. But she also likes the name Breeze. We can ask when we – whoa!” Ren stopped as the airship took a sharp turn and everyone stumbled to the side. “When we get there, which I think is happening very soon.”

Nora reluctantly sat up straight again. “The real issue is Ren’s name,” she said. “There’s going to be like, three more Rens there. But we all know this is the real one, not those impostors.” She threw one arm around Ren’s shoulders and with her other hand pointed to his head. 

The side doors of the airship’s central bay slid upward, and everyone within watched as they settled to the ground. The hum of the engine switched off, and Eve appeared in the doorway to the front cabin, with Xuri, Yang, and Blake close behind. Everyone filed out and jumped down from the airship one by one, and Ren led the way toward the middle of town. 

Someone was running to meet them. Two someones, actually, though the other followed at a fast walk and merely waved to the arriving group. Ren was tackled into a tight hug by his cousin, but it only lasted a few seconds before she let go and turned to do the same to Nora. “Lie! Nora! You made it!” She pulled away again and introduced herself, barely able to speak through the wide smile plastered across her face. “Hi everyone! My name’s Breeze. At least, I think so. It might be. You must be Team Juniper… and more!”

At first glance, Breeze appeared to be a boy about Ren’s height, clean-shaven, with straight black hair down to her waist. She wore a similar shade of dark green to her cousin with the same family emblem emblazoned prominently across her chest, except the familiar lotus flower was a shade of pale lavender instead of pink. It was only after she finally stood still for a moment that people noticed the green cargo pants with pockets bulging and loose wires hanging out in every direction. 

Nora quickly set to work introducing her friends and teammates. Breeze went around to each one in turn, giving hugs to those who didn’t immediately pull away and handshakes to the rest. Just as she finished, the woman following her arrived and introduced herself as Breeze’s mother Eissa, and the whole cycle began again. 

“Oh, little Lie, you’re all grown up! You look so different from when you were only this big!” Eissa held a hand just above her waist. “And especially you, Nora! Oh, I’m so happy for you, both of you! Natasha’s told us about your team at Beacon and all the  _ interesting _ things you get up to. Come, come, let me show you around. Give me those bags, I can–”

She cut off suddenly as the entire group’s luggage lifted into the air by itself. “There’s no need for that, Mrs. Ren,” Eve said. “Just direct us to the inn so we can unpack, and we’ll meet up with you again shortly.” 

“Oh, uh, of course.” Eissa and Breeze led the way into the middle of town and pointed out a large building to one side. “You’ll be able to stay there for as long as you want. Lie told us how many people were coming and you’ve got rooms already reserved. Now, you two, let’s get you home.”

“Do you mind if I tag along?” Salem asked. “I didn’t bring much to unpack.” Breeze agreed enthusiastically and waved her along with Ren and Nora. Salem marveled at Farran on their way out to the edge of town. “This is a bigger place than Izuruka,” she commented. 

“You’ve been to Izuruka?” Eissa seemed surprised. 

“Yes, not that long ago. Or… well, I suppose technically no, it hasn’t happened yet… It’s a long story, involving a lot of magic.”

“Everything is, with her,” Ren remarked. 

“…Magic?”

Ren stopped short as a realization came to him. “Breeze… did you ever fix that CCT relay?”

“About a half hour ago. Why?”

Salem couldn’t stop herself from laughing. “You might be some of the last people in the world to not know magic is real,” she said. “Here, watch.” She vanished in a soft golden glow, and moments later reappeared with a crystal-tipped staff in her hands. Breeze and her mother looked on in astonishment, but before they could gather their thoughts enough to ask the many questions they both had, the group arrived at the Ren family home. 

It was a modest two-story house right at the end of the street, directly adjoining the acre or two of farmland beyond. Breeze led the way inside and through the front hall into the kitchen directly behind. Ren and Nora set down their bags to unpack later and everyone made their way into the living room to the side. 

A large man with a thick beard lay on a couch with one leg elevated, everything below the knee wrapped in bandages, with a hardcover book laying closed on his chest. “Hello there,” he greeted the visitors. “Sorry I couldn’t come meet you when you landed. My name’s Hura. Natasha’s father.”

Salem stepped forward to take his offered hand. “My name is Salem. It’s nice to meet you all.” She shook Hura’s hand firmly, only to jump back in surprise when his hand completely detached from his arm and remained gripped in hers as Hura pulled his arm back to his side. A rust-orange glow surrounded his wrist on both sides of the gap, and as Salem looked down in mild horror, the separated hand let go and floated back to reattach itself where it should be. 

“Dad, do you  _ have _ to scare everyone you meet with your Semblance?” 

“You only get to make a first impression once!” Hura declared. “And it’s such a useful trick – except when I can’t quite get part of me out of the way fast enough.” He gestured down at his wounded leg. “Natasha, why don’t you show them what you figured out a couple years ago?”

“She’s told me about it,” Ren said, “but it certainly sounds impressive. Nora, Salem… just watch.”

“Let’s go outside, actually,” Breeze said, and led the way out the back door to a small patio. Behind her, Hura disconnected his wounded leg and stood with the aid of crutches, and he and Salem took up the rear as she typed into her scroll as she moved. 

A swirl of pale purple light surrounded Breeze and the space just in front of her and a second human figure took shape, who immediately whirled around to catch Breeze’s limp form as she collapsed and laid the unconscious form on the ground. This new person looked very much like Breeze, except an alternate version where she had experienced the opposite direction of puberty, and there was a persistent lavender glow emanating from every surface. 

“Hello again!” The new Breeze waved. “Don’t mind the other me. I’m perfectly fine. This is my Semblance: I can leave  _ that _ body behind and create a new one in whatever form I want. You can probably guess how I discovered it.”

Eissa gave her guests a wry smile. “She did it accidentally one morning without even realizing. She came down to breakfast like that and I was just like, who is this strange girl in my house and why is she purple?” She shrugged, then caught sight of her husband still standing next to Salem. “Hura, you’re  _ supposed _ to be keeping that leg elevated as much as possible!”

“It is elevated.” Hura nodded toward the house. 

“Not like that! You know it still acts like it’s connected down there. Go on, get back inside and take care of yourself properly.” Eissa shooed him away. “Now, Natasha, dearie, show them what else you can do.”

Breeze vanished in another swirl of light and awoke in her normal body just long enough to give a grin and a thumbs up, then a larger swirl coalesced into the form of a purple Atlesian Paladin mech standing over her human form. A voice was projected from its external speakers, even as the front window looked onto an empty cabin. 

“Any form I like! Bigger things drain Aura faster, though, and I can’t change without waking up in between. I can’t quite out-fight dad yet, but I’m getting there. The biggest downside is that I’ve got to protect my normal body. Anything happens to it and I get knocked back in right away.” The Paladin disappeared and Breeze stood up as her usual self. 

Just then the doorbell rang, muffled but still audible out on the patio. Eissa rushed in and the others followed, Salem right at Eissa’s heels all the way to the front door. It opened to reveal a single young woman in black and white standing alone on the front porch. 

“Hello, Xuri,” Salem greeted her, then looked to Eissa. “I texted her earlier. You want to see some more impressive magic, here it is.” The three made their way back to the kitchen and living room. “Hura, if you wouldn’t mind unwrapping those bandages, we’ve got something a little faster than natural Aura healing.” 

“Oh, there’s no need, actually,” Xuri said, her eyes already lighting up with flares of green and both hands taking on a softer glow. “Just let me see that leg and it will be good as new in no time.”

“Here you go!” Hura’s leg separated at the thigh with the same muddy orange Aura at both stumps and the lower part floated out toward Xuri, who yelped and backed away while the rest of the gathering only laughed and put their heads in their hands. 

Xuri recovered from her shock and passed her hands over the deep Grimm bites, calling up her magic to undo the damage in a matter of seconds. “That should do it,” she said. “Healed by magic. It’s not  _ just _ for beating up your former mentor after finding out he’s been lying and using you for years.” 

“Just how much did we miss during that CCT outage?” Eissa asked. 

“Quite a lot,” Salem answered her, “but it was all broadcasted live and I’m sure there’s a thousand recordings out there by now. We’ll catch you up later with all the context and everything, but for now, we’ve only just gotten here. Breeze, why don’t you take Xuri and me on a tour of Farran? I’d love to see more of the town. Ren, Nora, you might want to stay and unpack.”

“Yeah, that sounds good. Come on.” Breeze trotted out to the front door again and led Salem and Xuri into the street. “So, this part of the town is… houses. Lots and lots of houses.” She led the way back toward the center of Farran, walking backwards so she could face her guests. “This place is set up like a wheel. You got your shops and everything in the middle, and the comms relay and all that. Most people live in a wide ring around that. We’re way out on the edge because mom and dad have that farm.”

“I didn’t see much of a wall out there,” Salem remarked. “How’s your defense against the Grimm? Do you ever get Huntsmen from Beacon up here?”

“Dad’s good enough to be a Huntsman, he just doesn’t have the certificate. My Semblance is strong in a pinch, but I don’t fight that often. We’ve got enough fighters without me, and people are pretty happy here. We only get serious attacks a couple times a year.” 

Salem nodded along with the girl’s words. “Well, that’s good. And I suppose you can trade Huntsmen with the other towns around here if you need to.” She reached up to take the jeweled crown off her head, and spun it around one finger. “You know, there’s magic that allows seeing into alternate timelines. There’s one I’ve been through where Xuri here lived in this area. If she hadn’t gone to Shade instead.”

“Wait, really?” Even Xuri seemed a little surprised. “I mean, I was pretty on the fence about it, I guess. I had my magic and knew I should train with it, but on the other hand, my family always got harassed pretty badly even in the so-called kingdom of survivors. I could see moving out to a Faunus-friendly place to live in peace.”

“Well, this is a pretty nice place,” Breeze offered. “About a third Faunus if I had to guess, but that number’s been rising." The trio returned to the central square and she pointed out the miniature CCT tower at one end. “Seems like that piece of junk breaks every other week. Still, Lie said Vale was hit hard the other day, so it’s probably good the news didn’t make it here.”

“Probably so. Xuri, can I have that sword for a bit?” Salem held out a hand and the Relic of Destruction was pressed into it without hesitation. She aimed both it and the scepter toward the center of the square and focused on her memories of the warning system she had seen these villages using in the future. One by one, five cylinders of dirt were erased from existence and replaced by hefty wooden poles, each with a bright light at the top connected to a tangle of wires and a control box. 

Salem handed the golden sword back to its assigned Maiden, then looked to Breeze. “I’ve got no clue how this works, but I’m told you’re an electronics expert so… have fun dissecting it. What it’s  _ supposed _ to do is tell when one of the nearby towns has a Grimm invasion in real time, so their shared protector can be where she’s needed. That would be Xuri, in the alternate timeline. With her magic she cleared Grimm like a whole team of Huntsmen, even without formal training.”

“If I’d left Vacuo like I wanted to…” One corner of Xuri’s mouth turned down with the memories. “It was bad. You guys know how Faunus genetics work, right? Parents of the same type produce the same type, different types can get anything. Well, my parents always thought they were the same type. They look the same. They’re both gray fluffy canines. But then I came out a zebra, and, well… you get the idea. 

“It’s a hard trait to hide,” Xuri continued. “I lean into it these days and wear even more stripes to match, but as a kid I just wanted to disappear. People accused my mother of being unfaithful and tried to take it out on me as well. Finally my parents got officially tested and it turns out mom’s a wolf but dad’s a coyote, just different enough to hit the randomizer. That didn’t stop anyone from being mean, though.”

“Oh, that’s awful. I would hope it’s not that bad here, but… I’m a human, so I might not even notice half the racism.” Breeze led her small tour group down one of the other spokes of the city’s wheel. “With the transphobia, at least I can pass as a cis man if I have to. I just hate it and don’t really bother to try anymore.”

The group approached a large park spanning the space between this street and the next, an eighth of a circle away. “I spent a lot of time here as a kid,” Breeze announced. “When Lie and Nora stayed with us, we practically lived in this park. I’ve got to get them back out here. I remember one time, it was late and we were making smores at a campfire or something, and of course, as kids do, I took a stick and set it on fire and started pretending I was fighting Grimm with it.”

Xuri laughed. “I think we’ve all been there.”

“Anyway, Lie took the stick away from me and I went crying to mom that he stole my fire. In retrospect, I don’t think she was really paying attention because she didn’t interfere, she just told me to take it back. On the plus side though, I unlocked my Aura that night, so no one went home with serious burns.”

Salem’s scroll rang in her pocket and everyone paused while she slid it open to answer. “Eve. What is it? …I see. Alright, I’ll deal with him.” She looked to Breeze with a helpless half-smile. “I’m so sorry, but you’ll have to continue the tour without me. It seems one of my associates is being released from the hospital and wants to get in touch immediately.”

Salem gave one last apologetic look as she turned, then hurried away back toward the center of town. She texted Eve as she walked, “Thanks for the save. Did Hazel really call you, or was that just an excuse?”

“No word from him yet,” came the response back. “I saw you go by from the window and figured you could use an escape. You may want to check in with Hazel yourself.”

“I will. Xuri and Breeze should be alone with each other for a while yet. But we should get ready to show Breeze and her parents what happened in Vale. Find a good quality recording.”

Salem was so intent on typing her messages to Eve that she nearly bumped into a woman at the edge of the central marketplace. “Sorry!” she exclaimed, and backed up a step as she shoved her scroll back into her pocket. The woman glanced at her for just a moment and Salem did a double take in recognition. “Rahdi?”

“Yeah… Do I know you?” The ram-horned woman regarded her with suspicion. 

“Uh, not really. We met in an alternate timeline when I visited Izuruka. A year or two in the future. Don’t worry about it.”

“What the hell are you going on about?” Rahdi frowned. “I haven’t lived in Izuruka for years. No one has.” 

“Magic is real and I can say that publicly now,” Salem said quickly, then paused as she tried to recall the names of Rahdi’s husband and son. “You, Jonah, and Tizo showed me around – what’s wrong?”

Rahdi glowered at her as if she had said something horrible. “I think you should leave.” When Salem didn’t walk away, she continued, “That place closed down years ago and my husband and I moved here. There’s no sense bringing it up again now. We’ve never met you before and I don’t much feel like starting today.” 

Salem took a step back, her brows furrowed in confusion, until suddenly a realization came to her. “Oh… I’m so sorry, this is all my fault,” she said, backing off a little further. “I sent your guardian away to Shade. She was never here to protect you. I… I killed your son.” 

Without a moment’s hesitation further, Salem swung the scepter out to point at an empty place on the street. She hardly knew Tizo, only from that one short meeting before she and Yang had been called on to protect the town in Xuri’s place, but the boy’s name and appearance along with the knowledge he was Rahdi’s son was enough to pinpoint exactly the Aura to extract from the afterlife. 

The dome of magic swirled with pastel yellow and Salem wondered if Tizo had even had his Aura unlocked before he died. Certainly none of the residents of Izuruka had been skilled fighters – though at least Farran seemed to be better defended. Rahdi couldn’t quite take her eyes off the display of swirling color no matter how much she wanted to be away from the reminder of her loss, and several other residents stopped what they were doing as well to stare. By now some might have seen the news from Vale and chosen to believe it or not, but even those who accepted the truth would not be expecting magic in their own small town. 

The sphere of yellow faded into nothingness and left behind a teenage Faunus boy with the talons of a bird of prey, blinking and rubbing his eyes as if just waking up from a long sleep. Salem helped him up and pointed him to face Rahdi, and gave him a slight push on the shoulder to send him back to her side. “Hello again, Tizo. Go catch up with your mother. She’s been missing you greatly.” 

Salem slipped past them both into the center square of Farran, leaving Rahdi dumbfounded as her long-lost son returned. Tizo seemed confused by his surroundings, in this new town miles from his old home and a few years later than he remembered, but his mother’s face was a comforting familiarity despite her shock and the tears beginning to appear in her eyes. 

“You see that, gods?” Salem called up at the sky as she crossed the plaza. “That’s how easy it is! Just because a death is  _ balanced _ doesn’t mean it’s  _ fair! _ Maybe if you’d ever shown a bit of  _ kindness  _ to your subjects, I wouldn’t have had to banish you from the world!” She attracted quite a few stares from the people around, but brushed off the only one who dared approach to push instead into the doorway of the local inn. They could get their information from the Vale news. For now, Salem needed to catch up with the rest of her team. 

* * *

A loud knock reverberated through the house of the Belladonna family. Ghira jumped up from the desk in his study and quickly made his way downstairs, only to find Kali a few steps ahead of him, already at the door. Each pulled open one side of the heavy door, but as they looked to see who had knocked, their mouths fell open in surprise. 

“High Leader Khan,” Ghira greeted the lone visitor. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

“You know you can call me Sienna.” The High Leader entered as Ghira waved her forward. “I’m here for personal reasons as well as business. Have you heard about what happened in Vale?”

“Bits and pieces, but I don’t know what to make of it. Come, sit. Would you like some tea?”

Sienna accepted the cup placed in front of her on the low table with a smile. “I was there in Vale,” she said. “Your daughter Blake and I fought together. You must have heard the White Fang was present at the attack?”

Ghira’s eyes narrowed slightly. “I heard they were on the wrong side of it,” he said in a carefully measured voice. 

“But also,” Kali spoke up, “I thought Blake left the White Fang a year ago? She’s sent us pictures of her team at Beacon.”

“She did leave,” Sienna said, and both of Blake’s parents let out a sigh of relief. “The attack on Beacon was carried out by a rogue cell of the White Fang, led by a certain Adam Taurus. A man with whom your daughter had quite a history.” 

“You don’t mean to say…”

“Blake was not a part of it.” Sienna took a sip of her tea. “Adam led that invasion of his own accord, working with a group of human terrorists against my orders. I was warned at the last minute that he planned to assassinate me and take over full control of the White Fang to declare war on humanity. He also wished to kill Blake for rejecting him. As a result, she and I found ourselves allies once again.”

“We saw a video clip of you with Adam’s head on a pike,” Kali accused. “Was that really necessary?”

“It was,” Sienna replied calmly. “And you should have also seen then that I offered to help rebuild Vale. But I didn’t kill Adam. Blake did.”

“What?” Ghira nearly choked on his tea and had to take a moment to compose himself. “She wouldn’t do that. She couldn’t.”

“She did, and with such a display of power and skill as I have never seen. I went to confront Adam but I was not prepared for his ferocity. Were it not for your daughter, he likely would have succeeded in his plans. Instead, I am alive and well, and Adam is neither. The world and Faunuskind are safe from a pointless war entirely thanks to Blake.”

Sienna paused to let her words sink in. She didn’t expect the Belladonnas to believe everything without speaking to Blake themselves, which by their reactions they clearly had not yet done. But they needed to hear what had happened, and Sienna arriving to tell them first might sway their response to what she needed to ask, once the young Belladonna’s report came in and corroborated her own. 

But before Sienna could get to the second reason for her visit, Kali opened her scroll and flipped it around to show her a picture. A row of five masterful statues in black and white with Blake clearly recognizable at one end, and a nameplate at her feet to further prove her identity. “What can you tell us about this?”

Sienna frowned. “That, I was not present for. After our battle with Adam and his latest accomplice, Blake and I went our separate ways. I’ve seen the same recordings you have. But what I do know is that magic is indeed real as Headmistress Goodwitch announced, and your daughter is now one of the few capable of wielding it.”

Kali pocketed her scroll again as Ghira leaned back in his seat with his hands behind his head. “I wish she would just come home,” he said. “I hope she knows we aren’t mad at her for staying with the White Fang after I left. She’s always been a headstrong girl, always so stubborn and intent on doing what she thought was right. If Adam truly became as bad as you say, then I’m proud of her for breaking away from him. I just wish I could tell her that.”

“I’m sure she’ll find her way home when she’s ready.” Sienna’s words did little to reassure the anxious parents. “But I must confess… Blake saw Adam for what he was long before I ever did. Adam rose to power under my leadership. I enabled him despite his extremist views, and it nearly got me killed. I was blind to his excesses… but you never were, Ghira.”

“What are you getting at…?”

Sienna hesitated and her hand drifted toward the teacup in front of her, but she didn’t quite pick it up. She took a deep breath and looked up to meet Ghira’s eyes. “I would like to offer you joint leadership of the White Fang. I believe the Faunus would be best served by a combination of our respective tactics. Peace first when peace will be listened to, targeted violence after peace has failed. Never the undirected aggression of Adam and his followers. I underestimated your daughter, and I believe I may have also underestimated you. With the two of us together, I believe we can be more successful in the field as well as more resilient against splinter cells like Adam’s. Will you return to help lead our struggle for justice?”

Ghira stared at her for a long moment. “I will think it over,” he said finally. “And I must speak with Blake myself. I am not certain how the people will react to seeing me in that position again, and Kali and I have been happy here with me as Chieftain of Menagerie. But, that said… your proposal does sound promising, and I believe I could be convinced.”

* * *

“Two days after the attack on Beacon Academy and on Vale, tensions remain high as citizens struggle to come to terms with the troubling revelations about their former Headmaster. The interim Headmistress Goodwitch has indicated a willingness to reopen Beacon Academy to students within the week, although with so little of the semester remaining, it is unclear whether classes will resume or if there will merely be a debriefing and consolidation of what the students have learned through this early exposure to real life Huntsman work. 

“Professor Goodwitch has reportedly also filed a motion to end the Vytal Festival tournament without a victor. This has drawn criticism by some who see it as an effort to preserve Beacon’s status after one of the Academy’s singles round contestants was disqualified and the other forfeited her match, but sources say General Ironwood of Atlas Academy may support the move. His own prize student, Penny Polendina, has not been seen since the attack and is reportedly injured but in stable condition. If the leaders of Haven and Shade also agree, this would mark only the second time in history that no champion has been crowned, following the tragic airship crash thirty-two years ago in which the last four contestants of the time all lost their lives. 

“The Vale Council has yet to weigh in on the recent events, including the question of whether to officially confirm Glynda Goodwitch as the new Headmistress of Beacon. They have been meeting behind closed doors almost nonstop since the morning after the attack and have called in numerous people to give statements, but no report has yet been released. The Council has met with many of the apparent heroes responsible for protecting the city, including the four students from Team Ruby of Beacon and the self-described immortal witch known as Salem. 

“However, given Salem’s later confession to instigating the attack that she herself was seen working to stop, as well as countless others stretching back centuries, it is unclear what is to be done about this powerful new figure on the global stage. Evidence continues to mount for the claims that magic is real and that Salem herself cannot be killed by any means, through her own demonstrations on camera of both points as well as corroborating stories from Teams Ruby and Juniper of Beacon and Professors Branwen and Xiao Long of Signal Academy. 

“But many questions still remain: not least among them, where did all these magical people disappear to after the few brief interviews they gave were finished? One eyewitness reported a large airship of unfamiliar design heading north, but the Kingdom of Atlas has not announced their arrival. And what happened to Professor Ozpin? Careful analysis of the footage of his final battle reveals that he was still breathing after being knocked out, but the broadcast ceased before revealing where he was taken or how the team who stopped his rampage erected a monument to themselves in Armistice Square. 

“Efforts to rebuild are underway, not only at the site of that magic struggle but all over Vale and Beacon campus. The overall mood of the city seems relieved and hopeful despite the damage, because as we all know, it could have been much worse. At this time there are only nineteen confirmed civilian casualties, and the influx of Grimm has slowed to a trickle barely above baseline levels. With almost all of the attack’s instigators either dead or in custody, Vale is triumphant in our survival and we face this uncertain future with our heads held high. 

“The Vale News Network is proud to serve through these trying times and will continue to bring you the latest updates from–”

Breeze muted the TV and let Lisa Lavender finish in silence before her news segment cut to commercials. “So, all of those magical people who disappeared to the north… I think I might know where they are.” 

Next to her on the couch, Pyrrha laughed and glanced across at Salem and Eve on the other end. “I imagine much of the town knows by now. Especially after Salem raised the dead right in the center square.”

“I had to,” Salem spoke up. “That kid lived at least another two years in the timeline where Xuri was here. I chose to make this timeline real instead of that one, so it’s only fair that I give him back the life he should have had.”

“It might have been better to do so privately,” Eve admonished. “If word gets out, we may have a flood of petitioners to deal with. Are you prepared to resurrect every person someone asks you to?”

“Any death I caused, absolutely. Others, probably, if someone can make a case for why they deserved better. I don’t want to be an asshole like the God of Light. But the world all saw me bring you back during our fight with Ozpin, and nobody approached me yesterday in Vale.”

Jaune leaned forward to look across Pyrrha and Breeze and meet the witch’s eyes. “Well, you brought Pyrrha back already, and that’s all I would have asked.” He gave Pyrrha’s hand a light squeeze and rested his head on her shoulder. 

“Aww, look who’s being cute!” Jaune sat bolt upright again as Ruby’s voice came from the door. “I’m just teasing. Cute is good, isn’t that right, Weiss?” Weiss entered at her partner’s heels and only made a vague disgruntled noise in response, but when Ruby glanced back at her there was a half smile on her face. 

“Anyway,” Ruby continued, “this has nothing to do with anything, but I just noticed, hearing you both from the other room… that reporter lady Lavender, she sounds just like Pyrrha. It’s kind of weird, actually.”

“I’m not surprised,” Pyrrha said, though this only served to make Ruby more surprised. “She’s my… half-aunt, if that’s a thing? My mother’s half-sister. To be honest, I think I’m the reason she moved to Vale. She kept reporting on me when we all lived in Argus, all about my achievements at Sanctum, but my parents could tell I was uncomfortable in that kind of spotlight. Mom told her to stop and she just… left Argus.” 

“Well, she’ll have her hands full with this news for a while, I bet.” Breeze looked around at everyone. “I can hardly believe it myself, and you’re right here.”

“Most of us aren’t magic,” Ruby said. “Just Salem and Eve here, and then Yang, Blake, and Xuri. Pyrrha was  _ almost _ the Fall Maiden once though.”

“Almost. To me, it was just a week ago that Professor Ozpin was showing me the vault and saying I was to be his new guardian of the world. I was ready to accept it – I  _ did _ accept it, but Cinder interrupted the transfer. It felt like my destiny. I’d always wanted to be a great warrior protecting the people, and here I was being offered a chance to achieve it all in an instant. But I didn’t quite become the Fall Maiden then, and this time everyone was saved without me needing to.”

“If you asked nicely, Blake might give you the powers,” Salem commented. 

“What?” Pyrrha was taken aback at the suggestion. “You know that machine doesn’t just transfer magic, right? It moves Aura – an entire soul into another body. I only agreed the first time because Amber was dying and we needed her magic right then. Not now. I’ll achieve my destiny the way I originally planned to, with hard work and practice.”

“Oh, no, I meant the normal way. Kill her while she’s thinking of you, then bring her back. But what’s all this about destiny? I remember Cinder used to talk about that like it was important.”

“I don’t think of it like predestination,” Pyrrha explained. “More of something you aspire to your whole life, and some people achieve theirs and some don’t. For me, it’s becoming a great Huntress and saving lives even if it means sacrificing my own.”

“Which you already did once,” Jaune cut in, “so don’t go doing it again. We need you here.”

“You either, Ruby,” Weiss said. “No more flying into the barrel of a giant mech cannon or refusing to use our only weapon on our greatest enemy. Even if both of those  _ did _ work out in the end. If I ever have a heart attack, I’m blaming it on you.”

Salem tuned them out with a thoughtful look on her face, and responded only to Pyrrha. “You know… I think I get what you’re saying there. My destiny, as you’d call it, has been to save Remnant from the gods’ influence. First I angered them enough to make them leave, then I spent millennia preventing Ozpin from calling them back again. I wouldn’t call my task complete just yet, but I’m closer than ever before. What about the rest of you? Got a destiny?”

There was a pause as everyone glanced around at each other, unsure whether anybody was going to speak up first, until finally Breeze broke the silence. “Someday,” she said, “I want to help build the world’s first truly sentient robot. Not just another Atlesian droid, I mean a full person with an Aura and everything.” She caught Ruby and Weiss staring at her and stopped. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Uh, Breeze…” Ruby held up one finger with a nervous laugh. “Someone… kind of… already beat you to it.”

But instead of the disappointment Ruby expected, Breeze’s face lit up with joy. “Really? That is  _ amazing! _ Got to be Atlas, right? New destiny: meet the scientist and the sentient and… uhh… not sure what I do after that, actually.”

“Better figure it out quick, because we can introduce you to Doctor Pietro Polendina and his robotic daughter, Penny!” Ruby flashed a smile, but it was short-lived. “Once Penny is done being repaired after her injuries the other day.” 

“Wait. Penny Polendina… where have I heard that name before…”

“Probably the tournament,” Pyrrha offered. “She made it to the singles round. I got matched against her.”

“Ooh, I must have missed that one. She’s the girl with the floating swords, right? She’s a robot? How did that go? Did you win?”

“I… forfeited. I was warned about what she was. My Semblance lets me control metal, so… I could have hurt her without meaning to.”

“Which was exactly the plan, the first time around,” Salem said. “An accidental death in the tournament was meant to kick off the Grimm invasion the other day, instead of the White Fang starting it. But now that the attack is unnecessary, we all went to considerable effort to stop it.” 

She pulled her scroll out of her pocket and looked down at it, unopened. “Should I call Pietro for an update on the repairs? We sent Penny to him as soon as the battle was over so he’s had her a good day and a half now. He ought to at least have an estimate on how long the repairs will take.”

“Good idea,” Ruby said. “I know he can do it, but I can’t help but be scared for her anyway.”

Salem slid her scroll open and dialed her latest contact in Mantle. The line rang for a long time and she almost canceled the call, but finally a voice came on the other end. “Hello?”

“Doctor Polendina! This is Salem. I sent your daughter back to you yesterday, and I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of me in the news as well. I have some of Penny’s friends from Beacon with me, and we were all wondering if you had an update on her condition.”

“Oh! Well, er, I can tell you what I know.” There was a pause. “Wait, did you say friends?”

Salem took the scroll away from her ear and pushed a button to switch it to speakerphone. “Yes, Penny made quite a few friends during the festival. I understand she was instructed not to go out on her own much, but she did, and good things came of it.”

“Hello Doctor Polendina!” Ruby waved to the scroll without thinking. “My name’s Ruby Rose. I know we haven’t met now, but your daughter is a wonderful person and I’m proud to call her my friend.”

“Well, that’s very good to hear,” Pietro replied. “And it should help me deal with the military as well, getting Penny a little more freedom from now on. She was designed to be the Protector of Atlas and Mantle, you know. And she will be, just as soon as I get her up and running again.”

There was a heavy sigh from the other end, and a faint scrape of some tool across a desk. “I’m afraid I’m having a little trouble repairing her,” Pietro said. “I can see what’s wrong, and what needs to be done, and she is alive… Her Aura is still strong, and… That’s precisely the problem. Her Aura is blocking my tools. She’s not dead, just in a low power state – in biological terms, I suppose you could say she’s in a coma.”

“And to bring her out of it, you need to repair the damage, but to repair the damage, you need to get past her Aura.”

“And I’m afraid to beat down her Aura so I can work because in that fragile state, what if it kills her?”

“I understand,” Ruby said. “If she was completely gone, you could just take her cores and build a whole new body with a new Aura. I know you can do that… once. But if there’s any way to avoid needing to…”

“I may have an idea, actually,” Salem interrupted. “The problem is that Aura blocks the part of her body you have to work on, right? And she’s manifesting it subconsciously due to her Huntress training, so it’s not going to go away. Someone I know has a Semblance you might find useful.”

“Oh?” Pietro sounded hopeful. 

Several questioning looks greeted Salem as she glanced around. “So, team… Remember how I explicitly asked you guys not to kill Tyrian? And then you went and killed Tyrian anyway? We’re going to have to undo that.”

All of the confusion changed instantly to horror. “Tyrian?! You want to bring  _ him _ back?!”

Salem gave a slow nod with her lips pursed tight. “Tyrian’s Semblance wipes the Aura protection away from anywhere he can touch, leaving that area vulnerable for a time. It’s part of what made him so effective at murdering everyone he came across. But, seeing as I’m not quite as into murder these days, maybe his talents can be repurposed toward healing as well.” 

“He’s not going to agree to that,” Jaune pointed out. “I’ve met him enough to know that at least. He may revere you as a goddess, but he already went against your orders once.”

“No, no, I talked to Ren about that earlier. He was rules-lawyering that to give himself an excuse to murder more, effectively claiming Eve was lying about my orders. Still not something I approve of, but this time it will be face to face,  _ and _ we have Eve and the sword with us.”

Salem’s scroll crackled to life once again. “So, this Tyrian… Would that be Tyrian Callows, the famed serial killer from a few years back? He’s alive?”

“Well, not at the moment. But he could be, and he could help you bring Penny back. We can keep a very tight control on him and send an escort of multiple Huntsmen.” Before Pietro could raise an objection, Salem continued, “We’ll have him there as soon as we can, either tonight or tomorrow morning.” 

“Now, one last thing,” she said. “Doctor Polendina, you are the one person in the world who I would trust to do this properly. I want to commission another robotic body from you. Just like Penny, capable of holding a living Aura, but  _ without _ any Aura native to it. I  _ only _ need the body. I can supply the soul myself. Can you do that?”

“Um, sure, I should be able to,” came Pietro’s response. “As long as you’re sure about this. Creating Penny took a lot out of me and I can’t ever get it back. You should know what you’re getting into.”

“It’s not for me,” Salem told him. “Not to create anyone new. It’s to protect the lives of a boy named Oscar and a line of succession after him to eternity. I want you to make this robot body look as much as possible like Professor Ozpin. That’s who will be wearing it.”

“Oh… I see.” There was a brief sound of books and tools sliding across Pietro’s desk and a clatter as something fell off. “It’s true then, his reincarnation? A robot body would keep him from dying, as long as he’s careful. I can make that for you. And if your scheme with the murder man really brings my daughter back, that’s all the payment I’ll need.”

“We have a deal. Thank you, Pietro.” Salem tapped the screen of her scroll and slid it shut. “So, here’s what I’m thinking. The Relic of Destruction can take care of Tyrian’s tail. Eve can hold him still while I place a seal of binding. I’ll command him not to injure any human or Faunus, to speak only when spoken to and to answer every question truthfully, and to obey every order Pietro gives him. Then some group of us will go up to Mantle and oversee the repairs: me, Eve, Ruby, anyone else who wants to come. Any questions?”

“Quite a few,” Weiss immediately said, and beckoned toward Salem as she backed toward the door. “Salem, Eve, can I talk to you in private for a moment?” Salem and Eve rose from their seats, and the three exited together. 

“So, this Tyrian… I get the impression he wasn’t a very pleasant person.” Breeze and Pyrrha were equally unsure about this latest development. 

“He really wasn’t,” Jaune said, perhaps more emphatically than he really needed to. 

“He tried to kidnap me once,” Ruby offered. “After the Fall of Beacon, while Team Ranger was walking to Haven. That’s Team Juniper, minus Pyrrha, plus me.”

“And he made a real nuisance of himself in Atlas too.” 

“But his Semblance…” Ruby made a face. “Ugh, I really don’t want to see Tyrian back again. But it  _ does _ sound like he could save Penny…”

“And you’re Penny’s best friend, so… good luck? I know I’m not volunteering to chaperone mister stabby scorpion man, no matter how well he’s tied up.”

The door opened again and Weiss, Salem, and Eve came back in, though the latter two did not return to their vacated seats on the couch. “I had fewer questions than I thought,” Weiss said. “I’m on board for the Tyrian plan, but I’m going with you to Atlas. There’s something else that needs to be dealt with there as well. Salem, if you would…”

Salem pulled out her scroll again. “Everyone, be very quiet. I’m putting this on speakerphone, but just pretend you all aren’t here.” She dialed one of her regular contacts and held the scroll out in front of her. 

“Your Grace! How can I be of service?” The traitorous scientist picked up immediately. 

“Watts. I have a new mission for you in Atlas.” Salem paused and glanced around the gathering, her gaze coming to rest on Weiss. “I want you to assassinate Jacques Schnee.” 

All of Weiss’s teammates startled and Ruby opened her mouth to protest, only to be met with both Weiss and Salem putting a finger to their lips to silence her. On the other end of the line, Watts seemed almost equally surprised. “Jacques Schnee has been a valuable asset to us for years,” he said after a short pause. “He is still loyal, I’m sure of it. Let me talk to him and explain what he could do better.”

“That won’t be necessary. It’s true, for a long time his goals aligned with my own in many ways. But no longer. Watts, have you ever met Weiss Schnee, the current heiress to the Schnee Dust Company?” 

“No, Your Grace, I can’t say that I have.”

“I’ve met her. And her goals for the company align much more strongly with my own in the present moment. So, I think it’s time for a change in leadership.”

Watts paused again to consider his next words carefully. “Your Grace… Jacques is an old friend of mine. Surely I can convince him to merely resign instead…”

Salem frowned at the scroll in her hand. “Are you refusing a direct order?”

“Of course not! You know I would never do that, Your Grace. But please, I urge you to reconsider…”

Salem made a show of reconsidering and let an audible sigh slip through to the other end of the line. “Alright, fine. Watts, you don’t have to kill him.” Without hanging up, she turned to her more favored lieutenant. “Eve, assassinate Jacques Schnee.  _ And _ Doctor Watts.”

“What?! Your Grace, please, I–”

“Oh, hush now, Arthur. You know all her kills are painless. And just for the record, you are a  _ fool _ for thinking I wouldn’t find out you and Tyrian betrayed me. You had  _ specific  _ orders not to interfere in the Fall of Beacon. I wanted that attack canceled. And yet you chose Cinder over me.”

“Tyrian insisted we not leave until he could give you his report! He made me fly him to Vale after you, so–”

“Stop.” Salem rolled her eyes. “You made your choice, so own it. I don’t like it when Hazel tries to take more blame than he should, and I  _ really _ don’t like it when you try to take less. Despite what your academic record suggests, Doctor, you are an  _ idiot _ sometimes. And besides, how many times have I reprimanded you for being needlessly antagonistic, racist, homophobic, just generally a vile human being? This day was always coming.” She shook her head at the scroll sadly. “Goodbye, Arthur. I don’t plan to ever resurrect you.”

And with that, Salem slid the scroll shut and pocketed it once again. “Now, Eve is not  _ actually _ going to kill Weiss’s father.”

“That’s right,” Weiss said with a nod. “We’re going to draft a letter of resignation for him and deliver it to his desk while we’re in Atlas. He will be leaving his post immediately and giving over full control of the SDC to me.”

Ruby looked the most puzzled of the group. “But I thought you didn’t want to inherit the SDC?”

“I don’t. I’ll be appointing a board to run everything, though not before I explicitly disinherit my brother Whitley and reinstate Winter in his place.”

“Do you know who you want on the board?” Pyrrha asked her. 

“Not specifically, but I want it to be majority Faunus. Maybe even  _ all _ Faunus. I was thinking of asking Blake’s dad, actually. Her friend Ilia as well. Both of Ilia’s parents died in a mine accident. She’d be motivated to turn the company around. But I’ll have time to figure something out.”

“But… how are you going to make your father resign?”

“That’s my job,” Eve said. “I will accompany Weiss to meet her father, and then, while he is fully conscious and resisting, I will telekinetically manipulate his hand to sign the resignation. Maybe he’ll also sign a confession to skirting labor regulations and underreporting casualties from all the accidents his reckless practices have caused. One way or another, he’ll be kept away from positions of power for a while.”

“And Watts?” Breeze still looked a little uncomfortable. 

“Oh, no, I really am going to kill him. He’s been dead on paper for years, so all I’m doing really is clearing up a little faulty recordkeeping. It will all be totally painless, not that he really deserves it. I could demonstrate how, if you like. And then bring you back again, good as new.”

“Um… I… think I’d rather not.” Breeze grimaced and looked away, but neither Jaune nor Pyrrha could offer any support. 

Salem spoke up instead. “Breeze, how about you go fetch Xuri? We’ll need her to help control Tyrian, and we might as well do that while we’re all here and thinking about it. Ruby, Weiss, Eve, and I will leave for Atlas immediately, and we’ll hopefully have Penny with us when we return.”

* * *

Four days since the attack on Beacon. Four days since the White Fang had fumbled their operation so completely, and all her own plans had crumbled along with them. Four days since she had last seen her adoptive father. The first four of a whole lifetime ahead. 

Neo let the newspaper fall from her hands. Crime Lord Killed By Grimm, it had said. Partial remains found near the northern wall, positively identified as wanted criminal Roman Torchwick. 

Neo dropped to her hands and knees on the floor and opened her mouth in a silent scream of pain. She felt paper beneath one palm, less cold than the concrete all around, and squeezed her fingers tight to crumple the newspaper into a ball. The corners of her eyes prickled but were not yet wet as she stood again and threw the wad of paper into the far corner of the room. 

She stalked across to a table at one side of the hideout and snatched up her long, narrow blade again. Who was responsible for this? The Grimm would long since be destroyed, and they had no concept of justice or punishment anyway. Who had led Neo and the only family she had ever found into this nightmare? 

Cinder. She had been the true organizer behind all the moving parts. But Cinder was already dead, the very first casualty in the same failed assault that had claimed Roman’s life. And her subordinates, Emerald and Mercury? Both being held in custody, awaiting trial. Emerald might be able to break them out with her illusions – or at least, break herself out and leave Mercury behind – but she had not done so yet, and Neo had no intention of infiltrating the very place that wanted to capture her as well. 

Adam? Also dead, executed by the very leader who his attempted coup had failed to overthrow. The rest of the White Fang had vanished from Vale by now, and Neo had hardly met most of them anyway. Cinder’s master, the one she rarely spoke about but who Neo knew existed somewhere? Opposing her might get Neo in over her head, especially if there was more magic involved. 

Why had she and Roman even worked with these maniacs in the first place? Robbing every Dust shop in the kingdom was great, for a while. As legitimate supply dwindled, they had made a fortune in selling off bits of the hoard. But then  _ Cinder _ had ordered them and the White Fang to build bombs on an abandoned subway in the southeast, and everything had gone downhill from there. Neo fumed and swished her blade back and forth, wishing Cinder were here for her to slowly take apart one pressure point at a time. 

But she wasn’t. Neo would not have the revenge she so desired. Not even on the people she and Roman had fought in what was clearly his final battle. The two children she could take on easily… but the giant who had been with them was another matter. And the sadistic Faunus and his friend in purple? They could be anywhere, and Neo didn’t even know their names. And there was no way to tell which of the five had been the one to hurt Roman. 

It was hopeless. She might as well become a Huntress to take out her anger on the Grimm, for they were the only thing still living that she could possibly blame with certainty. Neo considered the idea for a solid four seconds before rolling her eyes and swinging her blade overhead to stick a half inch deep into the edge of the table. 

There seemed to be no way out. Nothing that would satisfy her, at least. Nothing that would feel just. Neo pulled the blade out of the wooden table and paced back and forth across the hideout once again. Without Roman she had nothing. He had always been her guide, her anchor, the one person she could count on to not treat her as broken or defective, the one who recognized her worth and her skill and included her as a full partner in all their schemes. Without him, what reason did she have to go on?

Neo slid a finger down the thin blade to its tip. Pale pink light flickered over her body as her Aura protection lowered, and she ran two fingers over first the underside of her chin and then down to trace over her heart. Neo turned her long blade around and held it gently by the metal, tip pressed ever so slightly into her chest as she stared down at it, still slowly circling the small room. 

It would be so easy to just fall on her sword and leave all this behind, to rejoin her father without first suffering a lifetime alone. No one would miss her. She had no unfinished business – none that could still be done, at least, not with Roman gone. She doubted anyone would even notice she was missing. Neo gripped the blade a little tighter and pressed it deeper into her skin. 

Her hand slipped on the smooth metal edge and a jolt of pain shot up her arm, overwhelming the pressure on her chest with the shock of it. Reflexively her fingers opened and the blade fell from her grip, leaving behind two parallel slices across her palm which welled up with red. Her Aura flickered back into place and the cuts ceased their bleeding, but they were deep and would take several minutes to heal completely.

Neo shook her head and kicked her sword across the floor. What a failure she was. She couldn’t protect Roman. Couldn’t defeat his attackers, couldn’t even help him get away as she always did. And now she couldn’t even manage to end it quickly.

Was it to be starvation or exposure then? Slowly wasting away in some forgotten alleyway deep in the underbelly of Vale? No, that wouldn’t do at all. Maybe she should find a train? At least then her final act would be noticed, and remembered. But not for long. Not personally. No one would really care about her life. No one ever had, except Roman. No one had ever shown they explicitly preferred seeing her alive to dead.

Wait. Not  _ quite _ no one. The girl from the train. The one with the flaming eyes. She had defeated Neo in battle and then refused to kill her, as if her life somehow held value. That girl… Yang… after their battle, she had seemed almost concerned for Neo’s welfare, anticipating the situation she now found herself in. Yang had offered a way out, but… this was still someone who had worked against her father’s plans. 

Or was it? The interruption of the train at Mountain Glenn, even as early as the confrontation at the docks, those operations were all done under Cinder’s orders. Maybe it was only Cinder who Yang and her friends really opposed. With shaking hands, Neo retrieved her scroll and navigated to the messaging window for her latest contact. 

“Hello?” she typed.

Within seconds a reply came back. “Hello, Neo.”

“He’s gone,” Neo wrote.

“I’m sorry,” was Yang’s only response to the news. A moment later it was followed by another message. “The offer still stands.”

Neo lowered her scroll to think. She could probably live on her own... for a while, anyway. She still knew where all of Torchwick’s stashes of stolen goods were. But how long would that last? How long before some of their hired White Fang thugs, now leaderless, raided them before she could? Once the easy money was gone, Neo would have problems.

She could try to rebuild in her father’s place. She had all the necessary contacts in Vale’s underground. But how well could a tiny mute girl control a criminal enterprise? Half her operatives would mutiny at the sight of her, and the other half would be poached by Junior Xiong. But here, she might have a lifeline.

“I’ll take it,” she typed. “What do you want me to do?”

“To be deserving of food and shelter? Nothing. I’d give that to my worst enemy.” Yang sent the message and continued on a new line. “To be deserving of friendship?” She inserted an emoji of a person shrugging. “Be a good friend back.”

“How? What do I do?” Neo repeated.

“Well, for one thing, don’t try to kill me. But our battle record is 1-1 now, so I say we just call it even.”

“Agreed.” Neo had no desire to fight someone in possession of magic again. Judging by the news and the monument downtown, Yang was friends with quite a few magical people, and it would definitely pay to be on the same side. She might learn how to harness that power herself, or at the very least, she could take advantage of their protection to rest and heal her heart before setting out again on her own.

“Come meet us all in the town of Farran,” Yang typed. “It’s a good ways north of Vale. Bonus points if your transportation isn’t stolen.”

“I don’t know if I can do everything legally,” Neo responded. “Be gay, do crimes.”

“Okay, I can’t argue with that. Gods know my girlfriend and I have committed our fair share of crimes too. We stole an airship once and flew it across a closed border. For a while my whole team were wanted fugitives in Atlas. Thankfully, all that’s been erased from history now.”

Neo suddenly gained some respect for the yellow-haired girl. Maybe she wasn’t just another boring future Huntress who would uphold the law and get in Neo’s way. And as Neo pondered, the messages kept coming in. “What really matters is that your actions, legal or not, aren’t hurting people. Sometimes doing the right thing is against the rules. We’ll do it anyway. There’s a reason Huntsmen and Huntresses are classified separately from kingdom police. When someone is both you get conflicts of interest between what’s right and what’s ordered, and–”

The message cut off without finishing the sentence and there was a slight pause in the stream of text. “Sorry, getting a little sidetracked. Just know, Atlas is a mess and you should never want to go there.” There was another pause as Yang scrolled back up to Neo’s last message again and finally registered what else it was saying. “Wait, you’re gay too?”

“Emerald was pretty,” Neo typed. 

“Well, if the Vale police ever let her go, you can ask her out. Or text her out, whatever. Now that Cinder’s gone, I’d be willing to help Emerald as well. She’ll be in the same situation as you.”

Neo jumped up to sit on the table. “So what happens once I get to Farran?” 

“I’ll let everyone know you’re not a threat, and you can join up with the rest of us. I don’t expect anyone to have issues. Like I said, you won’t be the only former enemy we keep around. Salem’s done much worse things than you, and weird as it still sounds, at this point I think I’d call her a friend. Or at least a teammate who I’d trust to have my back. As long as you’re making a good-faith effort to turn things around, that’s all we really ask.”

* * *

“Hey Ruby! And Penny. …And Salem.” Blake looked up from her book and the fluffy orange cat curled on her lap as her friends approached. “I’m glad you made it back in time. We tried to postpone the dance but the room is booked for something else after tonight.”

Ruby put a hand to her mouth with a pitiful expression on her face. “But… Weiss isn’t going to make it. She and Eve are still in Atlas.” After a moment she lowered her hand again and clenched it into a fist. “We’re going to have to party  _ extra _ hard so she can hear us all the way up there.”

Blake smiled and patted the space beside her on the bench, and Ruby sat with her to look out over the center square of Farran as the sun slipped just behind the tallest rooftops. The cat raised its head to look at her, then stood up and stretched before padding over to rub against Ruby’s hand. 

“So soft… Since when do you have a cat, Blake? I was only gone, what, five days? How could you adopt something this cute and not tell me?”

“Oh, she’s not from a shelter. I was just out in the woods one day and locked eyes with this beauty, and now she won’t leave my side. How’d it go for you? Penny’s back, I see.”

Penny saluted. “I’m combat-ready once again! My father even gave me a few upgrades.” Bright green light shone from her feet and she levitated a short ways off the ground while scorching the grass beneath her, and then she dropped back to stand again. 

“Penny is operational again,” Salem said. “And it turns out she can fly an airship, which is good because I can’t. Tyrian is dead again, and so is Watts. By this time Weiss may already be the owner of the Schnee Dust Company, but I expect she and Eve will stay another few days to make sure the transition is smooth. Eve has had close dealings with the SDC for a long time as part of my operation of controlling Atlas behind the scenes, so she can handle anyone who gets upset about Jacques leaving so suddenly.”

“And she’s taken the scepter with her,” Ruby added. “Atlas has been using it for a decade without even realizing it. In this timeline, Eve only just borrowed it for a week to attend the Battle of Beacon, and now everything goes back to normal.”

“That’s one less thing to keep track of,” Blake said. “You can leave the crown in your room. The sword’s already there. Might want to go get changed though.” The cat on Ruby’s lap looked up at her and meowed. “Not you. You’re already wearing everything you need.” 

Salem looked down at herself and the periwinkle dress she wore. “I was just going to wear this. Is that not okay?”

“I think you look wonderful!” Penny exclaimed. 

“It looks nice,” Blake said, “but we have seen it a lot now. Don’t you have anything else?”

“Uhh… no?” Salem shrugged helplessly. “I only own three dresses. This immortal one, my usual black one, and the battle robes.” Faced with several blank looks, she explained, “You know, the V-neck with the cape and the bone things on my upper arms? Did I never wear that around you guys? Oh, that’s right, none of you are from a timeline that experienced a Fall of Vale.”

“Well, I’m going to go show Penny our rooms and get all dressed up for the dance,” Ruby said. “Maybe I’ll even try out the stupid lady stilts again. That is, if your cat lets me up.” The cat showed no signs of moving, so Ruby just sighed and settled back in. “Alright, a few more minutes. You know, Blake, Weiss and I were thinking the other day, in the future we got our Huntress licenses, but Ironwood isn’t going to remember that now.”

“Oh, true. But if everything else is in the open now, I’m sure we can just ask.”

“Well, that’s the thing. We’ve got the skills, just not the paperwork. We could stick it out at Beacon another three years and graduate top of our class,  _ or _ we could use the Relic of Knowledge to prove we really were Huntresses before.”

The cat on her lap suddenly hissed and Ruby yanked her hand back, but it made no move to bite her. It stood up and stretched, then turned around to step back over onto Blake. Ruby stood as well now that she was free, and took Penny’s hand. 

Penny waved as she was led away. “It was nice seeing you again, friend! I can’t wait to meet everyone!”

Salem watched them go, then looked down at the orange cat kneading contentedly on Blake’s lap. “You know, I love cats, but I’ve never been able to have one in the castle. Too far away from everything. I have a hard enough time keeping my agents fed, and they’re rarely home.” She held out a hand for the cat to sniff. “Can I hold her?”

Blake raised one eyebrow and smiled as if holding back a laugh. “If she’ll let you.”

“I know how cats are.” Salem reached down and the orange cat leaned into her hand, so she gave a quick pet on the head and then scooped the cat up to hold in both arms, where it rested with both front paws on her shoulder. “She’s very friendly for a stray you found in the woods,” Salem commented. “Might be someone’s pet who got out… What’s so funny?”

Blake finally couldn’t contain her laughter any longer, and she doubled over almost in tears as Salem looked on in confusion. “We locked eyes in the forest,” Blake said again once she had mostly recovered, “ _ during Beacon initiation! _ It’s how Ozpin assigns partners!” 

Salem froze, then slowly lifted her hand away from the cat’s back as the truth finally dawned on her. “…Yang?”

The cat twisted around and leapt out of her arms, and with a poof of magic in midair transformed back into Yang. She failed to land on her feet and instead tumbled in the grass, and lay on her back for a while as she too was overcome with laughter. “That really fooled you, huh? I must do a good cat impression! Haven’t quite figured out purring yet, but I’ll get there.”

Blake helped her partner up and Yang sat on the bench beside her. “We were just thinking,” Blake explained, “if Qrow and Raven do their bird thing with a bit of Ozpin’s magic, then Maiden magic can probably do the same thing. And it turns out we were right.”

“I can’t wait to show everyone else,” Yang said. “I think Ruby and Penny bought the act too. I wonder how long it will take for someone to realize they’ve never seen me and the cat in the same room.”

“I must admit, I wasn’t expecting that.” Salem smiled and gave a slight shrug. “It’s nice to see some creativity from the new Maidens, though. It’s refreshing, after Cinder refused to branch out.”

“I’m going to have to be extra nice to Ruby though, after I hissed at her. I wanted to say no, let’s not get the Relic of Knowledge, it’s dangerous to have them all out at once, and… that’s what came out. About the license situation, I think there’s a third option. We can ask to take the exams early, and if we pass them we don’t even need the proof that we were Huntresses already.”

“And,” Yang continued with a pointed look to Salem, “I think you should take the Huntress exams too. The combat portion will be trivial and I’m sure you know the history better than the people who wrote the test, but there is that nice oath at the end. You know, to protect with body and soul all the people of Remnant, to serve beyond all borders of kingdom or species, until the end of your days? I don’t remember the full thing, but you get the idea. I think it would be a nice gesture.”

“Hmm.” Salem considered the girl’s words. “I do have a Huntress false ID already, but I suppose I could make it official. The hardest part is going to be putting demographic info on the card. It’ll want a last name, and I don’t really have one. And I have no idea when my birthday is, other than some time in the spring. It’s just been too long.”

Blake stood and Yang quickly followed, and the three began making their way toward the dance that would be starting soon. “You’re going to have problems doing anything in modern society as yourself,” Blake commented. “Just how old  _ are _ you? How long has it really been since the gods left?”

“You’re not going to believe this.” Salem paused to give Blake and Yang a smirk. “I’m twenty-nine.”

“You are not!”

“No, really! I’ve been twenty-nine for over twelve thousand years now, but that’s how old I was when I was made immortal. I didn’t get out of my father’s castle until age twenty-five, and I only had a few years with Ozma before he died. I went straight to the gods, made them angry with me, and I haven’t aged ever since.”

“And with your half-Grimm look, it’s impossible to guess,” Yang said. “I suppose after your first few centuries age starts to lose all meaning. You’re an adult and we can leave it at that.”

“Technically, I’m a  _ young _ adult. I can never even reach middle age, because the middle of infinity is still infinitely far away.” Salem pulled open the door to the building where the ballroom was located and she entered, but Blake grabbed Yang’s shoulder before she could follow. She took a moment to brush the dirt and grass from Yang’s back, and waved to Ruby and Penny arriving a ways behind them. 

Yang waited to hold the door for her sister and friend, and ushered them in alongside her to the atrium. “Welcome back. You two look great! Also… I did tell you Neo was here, right?” She tilted her head slightly to indicate their former opponent, sitting with Ren on one side of the lobby. Both glanced up at the group’s entrance, then went back to silently staring at each other and making small gestures in some sign language intelligible only to them.

The door on the far end opened and Breeze appeared, excitedly waving everyone into the ballroom. “Ruby! Salem! You made it! Come on, we’re all set up. You’re the last ones.”

“Salutations, friend!” Penny was the first to follow Breeze, and trapped her in the doorway with a firm handshake that seemed like it would never end. The others entered after them, with Neo and Ren taking up the rear. 

The room was set up much like the one at Beacon, with a large open dance floor and tables along the side walls, and a sound system at the far end where Nora and two unfamiliar girls stood. “Did you guys meet Sylvie and Rosa before you went to Atlas?” Breeze asked. “I don’t remember who was around when I introduced them. They’re friends of mine, just helping out with the music and lights.” 

“I don’t think we did, but it’s okay.” Salem shrugged and looked around at the room, decorated primarily in fuchsia and cream, with accents of shining silver. “Did you all let Nora pick the color scheme? Pink and white? You shouldn’t let her bribe you with pancakes like that.”

Salem stopped suddenly as she registered that her voice was the only sound in the room, and every other background conversation had been put on hold. People stared at her and the few arriving with her as if anticipating something to happen and Salem glanced back at her companions in confusion, only to see Yang and Blake backing away to one side and Ren and Neo leaving opposite them. Only Penny remained by her side, and she was quickly waved over to stand by Ruby instead. 

“What’s going on here?” Salem asked the assembly. “Why do I feel like there’s something you all haven’t been telling me?”

At the other end of the room, Nora took one look at her and suddenly sprinted to the corner to grab a silk rope hanging there. One of Breeze’s friends did the same in the other corner – was it Sylvie? Was it Rosa? Salem didn’t know which was which. Both cords were given a sharp tug at the same time, and a large banner unrolled from the ceiling to hang across the width of the ballroom, reading in clearly hand-painted words, “Thank you, Salem!”

Salem took a step back in shock. “Wait. Um. What’s that for?” She remained frozen in place as all those who had entered with her filed forward to join their friends, but all still remained on the sides leaving Salem alone between them. 

Ruby and Jaune both stepped out to face her. “This,” Ruby declared, “is a surprise party!”

“Not surprise in the sense that you didn’t know it was happening,” Jaune clarified, “but a surprise that the event is dedicated to you. Our teams, our friends, we were coordinating this the whole time you were away in Atlas.”

“But…” Salem was still stunned. “You dedicated this whole thing in my honor? Why would you do that?” She glanced back and forth to each of the small groups around the ballroom, where everyone stood looking at her with proud smiles on their faces. “Why would you think I deserve it?”

“For saving Pyrrha’s life,” Jaune said without hesitation. 

“For saving Penny’s life,” Ruby echoed. 

“For saving the lives of Sienna Khan and everyone else Adam killed after the Fall of Beacon,” Blake spoke up as she moved to join Ruby and Jaune in the center. 

“For saving the CCT tower and global communications, and all the lives that would have been lost to Grimm had it fallen,” Ren said. 

“For opening my eyes to Ozpin’s deception,” Xuri declared, “and stopping him from destroying all of Remnant!”

Finally it was Yang’s turn to step out to the middle of the space to meet Salem’s eyes straight on. “And for realizing your old path was wrong and turning your life around, and making real efforts to heal the damage you once caused. For making a commitment to protect life, and all that is beautiful and precious in this world!”

Salem stood, paralyzed with overwhelming emotion, tears streaming down her face. It was all she could do not to drop to her knees right here in front of her team – no, her  _ friends. _ This was not just another group of tools to be assigned to problems. These were people she actually cared about, and who cared about her in return. “But… but I… I couldn’t have done any of that without you. All of you, but–”

Her thoughts raced faster than her words could keep up, and her stuttering voice was interrupted by another proclamation from Yang. “And a special shoutout as well to my new friend Neo, who’s found the courage to take the first steps along that same path herself!”

Neo gave a silent curtsy in acknowledgement, and then suddenly there was music playing as someone in the back decided it was time to start the dance for real. Salem still stood in a daze and could not quite take the metal hand that was offered to her, instead simply backing slowly out of the main dance floor to leave room for the growing number of couples in her place. 

Her head started to clear a little and she wiped away her tears, but Yang was already paired off with Blake now. Most of the others were also with their usual partners as well – Jaune and Pyrrha, Ren and Nora, Ruby dancing not with the absent Weiss but with Penny. Salem felt a hand slip into hers and she found herself led to join the festivities by Xuri, and after a few slight stumbles, the dancing skills that had been drilled into her millennia ago returned to let Salem and her partner dip and twirl as they slowly drifted around the floor. 

Salem spared a few quick glances away from Xuri when she could, and saw Breeze with one of her friends, while the other was trying and failing to talk to Neo by the punch bowl. Salem tried to steer herself over nearer to them, and as the first song came to a close, she gave Xuri one last spin under her arm and then purposefully tripped her, sending her stumbling forward into Breeze as Salem let go of her hand. 

She gave Xuri a wave and a playful smile and then turned to set her sights on a new partner. Hopefully the plans had been going well in her absence, pushing those two together from all sides without either realizing they were being set up. After all, they were the only ones native to this current set of timelines, who had never seen glimpses of that other future in which they pined after each other but lacked a spark to give them a proper beginning. 

“May I cut in?” Salem asked to Yang and Blake. The pair nodded and exchanged a quick glance between each other as Yang took Salem’s hand. Yang stepped around almost behind Salem and the witch twisted around to look at her, and her free hand was taken at the same time that Yang gave her a slight push in the shoulder and pulled away from her grip. Salem found herself face to face with Blake instead and stared at her with a look of stunned betrayal, while both Blake and Yang cracked up laughing. 

Yang slipped out to the edge of the room and made her way around to where Neo was standing awkwardly by a table. She offered a hand and Neo took it eagerly, happy to pair up with one of the two people she knew she could talk to without judgement. They joined the other couples in a slow waltz, moving together without a step out of place despite their lack of history on a team together, even on this very first cooperative venture. 

The music swelled and shifted tone and Neo lifted one hand to show three fingers, then two, then one, and then suddenly Yang was struggling to keep up as Neo led her two steps to every beat. The other dancers spread out to give them more room, and Ruby and Penny even stopped to watch from the sidelines. 

Neo squeezed Yang’s hand rhythmically in another countdown to something. Yang gave her partner a nervous look, hoping Neo wouldn’t try to speed up again, and she didn’t. Instead, Neo jumped and pushed herself upward with one hand on Yang’s shoulder and the other on her waist, and before Yang could quite fathom what was going on, Neo had somehow flipped herself upside down with one knee hooked under Yang’s arm, leveraging their combined momentum with her own core muscles to launch Yang into the air. 

Neo dropped to the floor hands first and arched over to easily regain her feet, and immediately sprinted down the length of the ballroom to keep herself beneath Yang. She reached out to grab Yang’s shoulder as she fell and guided her to land upright, and levered some of that energy both to slow Yang’s descent and to wrench herself upward instead over her now grounded partner. She balanced in a handstand on Yang’s shoulders and twirled through a full rotation and a half before dismounting directly into a backward lean supported only by Yang holding her waist with a single arm. 

There was a smattering of applause as Neo stood up straight again. Yang looked dizzy and stepped out to lean on a table, and was approached by Xuri holding two cups of punch. Breeze had disengaged a minute earlier and was now leading Penny off to a corner to talk about robotics while her friend wound down the music and prepared the next song. This left Ruby as the only other person without a partner and Neo eyed her as if sizing up a new target, and Ruby frantically waved her off and made a show of approaching Blake instead. 

Salem stepped back from the dance floor as well to let Blake go with her team leader for a while. She leaned against the wall and gazed up at the banner at the end of the room with renewed wonder. All of the people here, they weren’t just tolerating her in the pursuit of a goal, or allying with her against a shared foe. Somehow, it seemed they had come to  _ like _ her… and Salem found herself rather fond of these young Huntsmen and Huntresses as well. 

Thoughts still nagged at her, that there was something critical she ought to be doing instead of celebrating and enjoying herself, but she pushed them away. With Oz neutralized, for the first time in twelve millennia she was truly  _ free, _ her childhood dream finally realized on the grandest scale. And with that freedom came the power to build, to create, to  _ heal _ . 

For it had finally come to pass that the immortal pair who had once exchanged vows, had now exchanged views. Salem was becoming the protector of humanity that Ozma had always thought he was, and had always failed at truly being. Ozma had become the schemer plotting the destruction of Remnant that he had falsely believed the old Salem to be. And through her journeys alongside both, Yang became what her silver-eyed sister had always dreamed of: a hero like the ones in fairy tales. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know what you're thinking. That felt like a conclusion, but there are still two chapters left. Just wait and see...


	17. Cycles' Close: The Longest Road

_ Two months after Ozma’s defeat.  _

Four people stared up at the large machine set up in front of them in the dim halls beneath Beacon Academy.

“Well, go ahead and load him in there,” Salem instructed. “You’re sure this is going to work?”

Glynda pulled open the chamber door on the right side of the machine, and Hazel carried the full-size robot body in the shape of Professor Ozpin and laid it into the metal box.

“I built that the same way I made Penny,” Pietro declared, walking around in his legged chair to examine both compartments. “And this Aura machine looks sound as well. I’m just glad it’s not me in there this time.”

“And this will keep him from ever dying again?” Hazel asked.

“It will prevent him from aging or falling ill,” Pietro corrected. “I was instructed to reinforce this body with every method I know, but he  _ can _ still be killed by force.”

“That will be enough,” Salem cut in. “You have the Aura restraints?”

“Right here.” Hazel pulled several thick metal bracelets inlaid with circuits from a pocket and passed them out to the group. 

“Good. We’ll need to be quick and get these on after he’s in the robot. Obviously we can’t do it first and shove an Aura into something that’s jamming the use of Aura. Goodwitch, you know how to operate that thing?”

“I do.” Glynda stepped over to the control panel between the chambers and motioned for the lid on the right to be closed. She tapped a few buttons and the machine shuddered as its full functions were brought online, and the indicator lights blinked green as she put in the authentication code.

Glynda sighed and turned back to face the others. “I wish it hadn’t come to this,” she said. “I can’t help but feel like I’m betraying him, even now. Even though we all know what he was trying to do. For twenty-five years I was taught that Ozpin was the only thing standing between Remnant and total destruction. It’s been hard to let that go. Even now that we know, it was him who was prolonging the destruction.”

“Except for at the end,” Salem said, “I believe he did mean well. But he was  _ terribly _ misguided by loyalty to the gods, and if his intentions were realized Remnant would have come to irreparable harm. I did what I had to do, and now that the danger is past I will work to undo all the damage I caused.”

“Not to mention the fact that he was seemingly incapable of trusting anyone, even his own innermost circle.” Glynda tapped a few more buttons and the two chambers tilted upward. “He told me a lot more than the rest, and it was still barely half what he knew.”

“If it’s any consolation, we were married and had four kids before he told  _ me _ anything about the judgement and the gods’ return.” Salem gazed at the unconscious form of Professor Ozpin in the left chamber, still held in suspended animation. “Send him over whenever you’re ready.”

“Alright. Here we go.” Glynda typed in the final command. Ozpin’s body glowed with dark green and he stirred as if in a restless sleep. The same green crept up the many cables attached to his chamber, up to the large box that acted as a reservoir for Aura, mounted high on the wall in the belief that physical distance from the body helped separate it and made the pumping easier. 

The green glow extended down the cables on the other side and the robotic body in the opposite chamber began to glow as well. Ozpin became more agitated and his body twitched and struck the glass holding him in, and Hazel moved to stand in front of the chamber to keep a close eye on his nemesis. 

The robot body shuddered and twitched as well as a living soul took up residence within. Both bodies’ eyes flickered open and shut in a daze, and still the thick cables remained suffused with light. Bits of other colors shot down their length, flashes of orange and violet and white, every color of every life he had ever had mixed in with the overwhelming common green. 

“Is it supposed to be taking this long?” Pietro mused aloud. 

“He has a lot of Aura,” Salem said simply. “Entirely too much, really. That’s why it’s important he not reincarnate again, because we had a terrible time stopping him now and every death only makes him stronger.”

Finally the cables on the left took their last trickle of Aura and faded to black again, and a moment later the right side followed. Ozpin’s body slumped back and was still, and its chamber automatically tilted down again to the rest position. 

“Now, quickly!” Salem yanked open the glass door and grabbed the robot’s left wrist to snap one of the metal bracelets around it. Hazel did the same on the other side, while Glynda knelt between them to snap Aura blockers over both of Ozbot’s ankles. 

Ozbot struggled and struck at the people around him, still disoriented and not quite awake, and Hazel pinned him against the back of the chamber with one hand on his neck. “What do we do now?” he rumbled. 

“Without his excessive number of Semblances, and without the magic that’s tied to his original Aura, he will be easy to contain.” Salem motioned for Hazel to bring Ozbot out of the machine and hold him with arms behind his back instead. “The students and I will take him from here.”

“So as far as the Council is concerned, nothing happened today,” Glynda said. “The public never knew what happened to Oz after the Battle of Beacon anyway. He’s just one more prisoner quietly released into Salem’s custody.” She glared at the witch. “I know it was you who broke Emerald out of jail.”

“Couldn’t have done it without Neo’s help,” Salem said with a grin. “You must have seen research that suggests rehabilitative justice does more to prevent future problems than punitive justice, right? I’ll admit, it’s much more fun to simply murder your enemies than it is to watch them slowly redeem themselves, but sometimes you just have to reach out and try to understand the other side. And of course, when your enemy is immortal, you have no other choice.”

“You intend to reform Ozpin too?” Pietro asked her, following in his mobile chair as the group made their way toward the exit. 

“I meant myself there, but yes, I’ll give it a good try,” Salem said. “Although, given how much history there is between us, I’m not hopeful in this case. I’ve already tasked Xuri and the Relic of Destruction with digging out a shaft two miles deep into the bedrock of Solitas. Once that’s done I may need your help again, Pietro, building multiple redundant layers of binding and Aura nullification down there. I’ve used Creation to make things I don’t understand before, but for something this important I’d prefer to have an expert on board.”

“That seems a little extreme… but I suppose extreme is warranted when the whole world is at stake.”

Ozbot finally found his voice, but he still seemed dazed almost to the point of sleepwalking. He craned his neck around as he was marched forward, trying to see who was with him in these dark marble halls. “Salem…” His speakers released the sound of countless voices overlapping as they spoke the same words. “Is that you? What are you doing?” Some of the voices were stern and accusatory, but many others were merely confused, almost plaintive as if Ozma had been awoken in the middle of the night to find a wife who no longer loved him. 

Salem’s eyes widened and her breath caught in her throat. Walking next to her, Glynda looked over at both of them and frowned. “What’s happened?” she asked. “Did the machine mess him up somehow?”

“He’s all there,” Salem answered, “but it sounds like he got scrambled in the transfer. Give him time and a few dominant lives will rise to the top again, but for now all the dormant ones get a bit of influence again.”

“Salem… this isn’t what he asked,” Ozbot muttered. 

“Sounds like his memory’s a bit confused too,” Salem commented. “I wonder what year he thinks it is.”

“You need to stop. I… need to stop you? But…”

“Shhhh… You don’t need to worry, Ozma. Everything will be taken care of. The world will be united in peace, as he asked of you.” Salem undid her complicated hairstyle and handed the metal brace underneath off to Glynda as she stepped around in front of Ozbot to face him directly. “You recognize me, right? Remember the life we had together. Your job is complete. Just rest now… Close your eyes, let Hazel carry you…”

Her soothing words and familiar look spoke to the older fragments stirred up from the depths of the Oz collective. Ozma, who had loved her through two lifetimes. Ostello, who had pined for the woman his past incarnation had left, and ultimately killed himself. Ozark the explorer, who had wandered the world in search of reconciliation and failed to find her, but who had also founded the first kingdom on the spot that would later become Vale. 

In the unordered jumble of past and present within his mind, the emotional response of seeing Salem being soft and kind brought those lifetimes to the forefront, drowning out the more recent lives whose worldviews clashed with the experience before him. Gone were Osmium the stalwart, among the first to settle Solitas, Oswald the warrior-king, Ozpin the cautious guardian, pushed to the back of his mind for a time and taking their kneejerk hostility to Salem’s name and voice with them. 

Ozbot’s eyes fluttered shut and he slumped forward into Salem’s arms. Salem motioned for Hazel to release his bound hands, and helped maneuver him so that the giant could pick him up entirely. Ozbot lay peacefully with a slight smile on his face, content to rest in the care of his first wife once again. 

“Well, maybe we’ll have a shot at reforming him after all,” Salem remarked. “Thank you, Hazel… for your remarkable display of self-control.”

“I swore I’d kill him as many times as it took for him to admit he murdered Greta.” Hazel looked down at Ozbot with disgust. “But I don’t like hitting a man when he’s down. If this really puts him away for good, and saves everyone else who his negligence would kill… then I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Have you considered teaching?” Glynda seized the opportunity. “The Vale Council confirmed me as Headmistress, so Beacon needs another professor to replace me. You could even oversee the initiation personally.”

“…That’s not a bad idea. What better revenge than to take Ozpin’s own project and do it better… I’ll think about it.”

* * *

_ Eight years after Ozma’s defeat.  _

A white line sliced downward through the air, on a hilltop overlooking the farmland around Farran. It widened into an oval, and opened as a door onto the vast white-skied desert that lay beyond the world. A single person stepped out, cane in one hand and Relic of Knowledge in the other, long hair suddenly buffeted by wind from the other side of the gap. 

“Yang!” Blake tackled her wife into a hug before she could even close the rift behind her. 

“Hi, Blake.” Yang extricated herself and carefully swept the cane across the tear in space to seal it, and waved to the rest of the gathering she had joined. “Good to see we all made it. We ready?”

“I’m ready,” Salem said. “But I’d be ready for just about anything after spending two weeks straight dealing with lawyers and accountants trying to untangle hundreds of years of financial dealings. I’ve had money in the Mistral stock market since the day they invented the concept of stocks, and I expanded to Mantle too as soon as it was founded. Trying to combine all my mortal aliases into a single account has been a nightmare.”

“Well then, this can be a nice break. What about you two?” Yang looked over to Xuri and Breeze as they walked closer, hand in hand. 

“All going well here,” Breeze said. “This whole protector of the region thing works great. Three whole towns, and one Huntress with magic is all we need. And I get her all to myself.” She smiled at Xuri and gave her hand a light squeeze. 

“Glad to hear it. And you’re looking good these days, Breeze!”

“Thanks! I made this body myself, you know. Not really looking forward to going off HRT for a few weeks soon, but it’s got to be done.”

“I’m doing quite well too, thank you for asking.” Eve spoke up from a short distance away. 

“I was getting to you!” Yang laughed, and dropped the blue lamp in the grass before walking over to point one finger at Eve. “First order of business: you need to kill me.” She paused and glanced back at the others. “I mean, anyone could, but I’d prefer if it was Eve.”

“You’re ready to transfer the Spring power?” Salem approached as well to lay a hand on Yang’s shoulder. 

“I am. I’ll be thinking of you, Breeze. Just one more thing…” She handed Ozma’s cane to Salem and stepped forward to whisper something into Eve’s ear. “Okay, I’m ready.”

Yang put a hand to her neck for a moment, then let it fall. Her eyes rolled upward and flickered shut, and Salem and Blake together lowered her gently to the ground. Her breathing slowed like she was falling asleep, and it was barely perceptible when it finally stopped. 

A hazy pink orb of magic lifted from Yang’s body and shot through the air to sink into Breeze’s chest. Breeze clutched at her now glowing eyes and stumbled back, and the wind briefly switched directions before the surge of magic faded and all returned to normal. The staff of Creation floated up from the ground into Eve’s hand, and moments later a new Yang sat up and smiled. She put a hand to the top of her head and grinned in excitement as she stood. 

“Yes! I get kitty ears now!” Both her arms were normal now as well, protected by metal bracers that unfolded from slightly modified gauntlets, but that was much less of a concern than her sudden change in species. “Sorry, Blake, it looks like you don’t have a monopoly on cuteness anymore.”

Blake blushed and put a hand to her face. “Are you sure you want to do this, Yang? Even with everything the White Fang has managed to do recently, it’s still not easy being a Faunus.”

“I’m sure I can beat up anyone who has a problem with it.” Yang stopped petting her own fuzzy ears to take back the cane that was handed to her. “Right. Second order of business: as convenient as this thing is for getting around Remnant quickly, we still do need to destroy it.”

“You want to do that first?” Salem asked, motioning Xuri over with the golden sword of Destruction. 

“Yeah, just in case the sphere wins and we end up with a broken sword. That’s something we’d have to roll back time for.”

“And we don’t have any further uses for the sphere?”

“Nope! I picked up Knowledge then went around sealing all four vaults before I came here. They’re just giant doors onto blank rock faces now. Had to burn a question learning how the thing works, but we still have one left.”

Salem smiled. “And with the crown, one is all we need. Be thinking of anything you want to ask now.” She gestured to Eve and the white ball floated out from the end of Ozma’s cane and hung in the air. 

Xuri stepped up and held the Relic of Destruction at the ready. “So there’s no more gateways to that other place?” she asked to confirm, and Yang nodded. “Good. If we can’t get rid of it completely, this will have to do. We can’t risk leaving a foothold for the gods or anything else that might be out there.”

She carefully lowered the sword through the center of the white sphere. The blade emerged unharmed on the other side, while the ball of nothingness merely caved in on itself and imploded with a faint popping sound, leaving no trace of its existence. “Well that was easy,” Xuri remarked. “One down, one to go.”

Salem stepped back a ways from Xuri and Eve and held out a hand, and the lamp of Knowledge flew into her grip. “Jinn!”

The wind over the hilltop ceased as time froze around the group. Blue mist swirled around the Relic as it floated out of Salem’s hands, and formed a thin trail from her to the open space beside the gathering where I left my lamp form behind and swirled into being as a humanoid figure wrapped in broken chains. 

I turned my attention first to Xuri and Breeze. “Greetings. I am Jinn, the Relic of Knowledge. I have been graced with the ability to answer any questions I am asked, and also with the mandate that I answer only three questions in each one hundred years.” I turned to stare down at Salem. “I wish I could say it’s good to see you again, but it’s not. I  _ know _ you and your girlfriends are fully intending to cheat. I’ll give you the same deal as before: you ask too many questions, and I tell you things you don’t want to know. You get  _ one _ legitimate question first.”

Salem let out a sigh. “Alright, fine. I’ll do my best to combine everything into a single question. I’m just asking to confirm things I already believe anyway, just to be absolutely sure.”

She took a moment to run through the list again in her head before looking me in the eyes. “Jinn… Is the following statement true? If the Relic of Destruction is used on the Relic of Choice, then the Relic of Choice will be destroyed,  _ and _ if the Relic of Choice is broken in this way, it cannot be returned to functionality by any means,  _ and _ if the Relic of Choice is broken in this way, it prevents calling the gods back to Remnant by any means, even if all pieces of Choice are collected alongside the other three Relics,  _ and _ if the Relic of Choice is destroyed then Sophia will be dead and will reside in the afterlife alongside the mortal dead,  _ and _ through your connection to Sophia it would then be theoretically possible to relay messages to and from the dead in real time.”

I rolled my eyes, and gave as my answer a single word. “Yes.” 

Salem’s face lit up with a wide grin and she beamed at her companions, hardly noticing when the weight of a lamp returned to her hands. “Yes! We can do this! Remnant can be safe,  _ forever!” _

Breeze walked over to examine the crown that Salem now held in one hand, rather than on her head where it had sat almost nonstop for years. “Do we really  _ need _ to destroy it?” she asked. “It’s been very useful. Can’t you just throw it in a volcano, or a pool of Grimm or something, so that only an immortal could get it back?”

“I hid Relics in a pool of Grimm once, and Yang retrieved them with her metal arm. And as for a volcano, or the bottom of the ocean, or even launching it into space… someday, someone, somewhere, might have the determination and the technology to find it. We’re aiming for perfection here. I want  _ zero _ chance of the gods’ return and  _ zero _ chance of Ozma’s defeat and the past eight years being undone. And even an infinitesimally small chance is still not zero.”

Salem glanced over at Eve and made eye contact with the black ring around her head, then tossed the Relic of Knowledge in her direction. Eve’s magic caught it effortlessly, and the lamp floated over to rest in the air next to the scepter, well away from the other two Relics. Salem waved Yang over closer even as she spoke to Xuri. “Hand me that sword, would you?”

Xuri gave her the Relic of Destruction and was surprised to find the Relic of Choice given back to her in exchange. “Xuri, Breeze, you two are the future. It’s only fitting that you should hold the crown as we seal in the past.” Salem paused as a thought occurred to her. “Actually, wait, let’s reset Jinn while we still can.” She took back the crown and placed it on her head. “Sophia!”

The other Relic spirit emerged in a cloud of green to take up position in front of everyone. “I am Sophia, a being created by–”

“We know. Sophia, include everyone. When I chose to ask Jinn a question just now, instead make me choose to proceed without doing so with confidence that my beliefs were already correct.” 

“An interesting choice. Transforming one of my uses into one of hers. There is–”

“We know. You don’t remember your previous uses, and afterwards you won’t remember this either, but I just want to say I’m sorry. You have done nothing to wrong me, but your presence poses an existential threat to this world and I will do what I must to protect it. Now, we’re all in agreement about this choice. Please make the change.” 

Sophia nodded. “It shall be done,” she stated, without even acknowledging the rest of what Salem had said. 

Sophia vanished as the slight shift in timelines went through, and Salem handed the crown back to Xuri and Breeze. She raised the Relic of Destruction high in one hand and looked to Yang, who stepped up without a word to place her hand over Salem’s own on the golden sword’s hilt. 

Together they lined up the blade with the center of the crown and exchanged a brief glance between them, then brought the sword down to slice cleanly through the central gem and across to the other side. The two halves of the crown came apart in Xuri and Breeze’s hands, now simply nonmagical metal, and both handed the pieces to Salem. 

Salem let out a long breath and gave the sword back to Xuri. “That’s it,” she said, and sat down to rest on the grass right where she was. She leaned back on her hands and stared out at the town below and the forest that stretched out beyond, feeling the wind on her face and the heat of the sun on her skin, and for the first time in millennia, truly relaxed. “We did it,” she breathed. “The war is over. Not just on hold, not just a skirmish won… all of it. My destiny is complete.”

Yang sat down beside her and Blake followed suit, but the others remained where they were. “I still think shooting it into space would have been better,” Breeze said. “Or at least it would have been cooler, if we could manage it. I know Dust loses power if you go too high.”

“It does indeed…” Salem nodded, still staring into the distance. “Remember the big research boom into spaceflight about sixty years ago? That was me. I funded it all with that massive pile of money I’ve been sitting on for centuries. The same money that’s been such a legal mess lately. I’d had enough of… well, everything… and I thought maybe I could escape it all.”

She gestured off toward Eve. “The plan was to steal the Relic of Creation, which I did anyway a couple decades later, and then fly off into space, find another planet out there, and use the Relic to create life. I’d set myself up a the sole goddess of a new world, and protect Remnant at the same time just by virtue of having the scepter. But all the scientists of Atlas couldn’t figure it out. At least we got some improved airships out of it all.”

“Well, no need for that plan now.” Yang threw an arm around Salem and leaned into her shoulder. Blake did the same to Yang on her other side. “The only thing we need now is for Summer and Spring here to make us some Maidlets.”

Xuri laughed. “Oh, we will.”

“ _ Please _ have a son,” Salem implored. “Have four sons. That will make my job so much easier.”

Breeze raised one eyebrow at her. “You know, just because a baby is assigned male at birth, that doesn’t mean they’ll grow up to be a man. If we end up raising another trans girl, don’t blame me.”

“In fact,” Xuri cut in, “Just to show we’re serious about helping out, I think maybe we should give it a good attempt right now.” She reached out to take Breeze’s hand again. 

“But… that won’t… my hormones are still…” 

“Shhh…” Xuri put her other hand over Breeze’s mouth to quiet her, and turned to lead her away back down the hill to their home. 

“I trust they’ll take care of it in time,” Salem said. “What about you, Eve? Anything else to report or suggest before we go?”

Eve stepped closer and the two Relics floated alongside her. “My current assignments are sufficient,” she stated. “The only news since my last debriefing is that Headmistress Goodwitch is considering retiring at the end of this year.”

“Really?” Yang seemed surprised. “I didn’t think she was that old. Any word on who her replacement will be?”

“Professor Oobleck would be the obvious choice, but he has already said he does not want the position. However, Professor Rainart does want it, and he’s very popular with the students. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was chosen.”

“Good for him.” Salem nodded. “I’m glad he’s found a new calling after his eternal revenge got cancelled. And if that’s all, Eve, you’re dismissed.”

“I think this is the revenge,” Yang pointed out. “Literally taking his enemy’s job. And it’s not like he has anything else to worry about. With the crown broken now, that puts an end to all of Ozpin’s schemes. Or Ozma, Ozbot, whatever.”

“I’m partial to just saying  _ him. _ It’s all in the tone. We all know which  _ him _ you mean.”

“It’s a shame the shakeup after his full body transplant didn’t last. I really thought we might be able to draw out a different leading personality from that mess.” Yang shrugged, and Blake yelped as her headrest was disturbed. “But no, he sorted out his memories again and reverted to being the same person we knew.”

“You know,” Blake mused, “Ozpin  _ was _ good for one thing at least. He introduced me to my future wife,  _ and _ my future girlfriend.”

“But that’s about all he was good for,” Yang said. 

Salem turned her head as well as she could with Yang resting on her shoulder, to glance over at Blake. “Someday it should be your two wives, but Vale law still doesn’t allow for polyamorous marriages yet.”

“We’re working on it!”

“You’d better be, Councilwoman Belladonna,” Yang teased. “Or should I call you… Councilwoman Xiao Long?”

Blake laughed and gave Yang a playful slap on the arm. “Either is fine. I still can’t believe they actually let me on the Vale Council. I’m the youngest ever and only the second Faunus.”

“Being Ghira’s daughter probably helped,” Salem remarked. “The new White Fang has done an amazing job under he and Ms. Khan’s combined leadership. What I can’t believe is that both of you get to have two last names and I still don’t have any. Either of you could have given me one, but no… you went and married each other instead.”

“We’ll get there eventually.” Yang raised her head off Salem’s shoulder to give her a kiss on the cheek instead. “After all, time has always been on your side.”

“True, I’ve got all the time in the world. But you two don’t.”

Yang’s face suddenly took on a thoughtful look. “But what if we did? What if you weren’t the only immortal on Remnant anymore? If you had people you could always count on to be there, people you loved who couldn’t be taken away… companions to keep each other sane through the ages so you’re not rebuilding an entire world alone.”

She laid back and stared up at the sky, still pensive. “The Domain of Light has got to still be around somewhere, right? With the magic water you were dropped into? If the pools of Grimm didn’t vanish when the God of Darkness left, I’d expect the God of Light’s pool to still exist too. Where was it?”

“Anima, west of Lake Matsu. Exactly halfway around the world from the Land of Darkness. Underground now too, after parts of the moon fell on it. I’ve got to ask though, are you sure about this? Do you  _ really _ understand what eternity is? If you become immortal, you’re here  _ forever _ , with no escape. There will be times when you  _ want _ to die, and you  _ can’t. _ Making a commitment for the rest of your lifetime is one thing, but for the lifetime of the world… I would urge you to think  _ very _ hard about whether that’s something you can do.”

“Oh, I know, I was just thinking out loud. We’ve got fifty years to decide, more with the scepter. But I would like to go find that place, just to see if the option’s really on the table.”

* * *

_ Five hundred years after Ozma’s defeat. _

Soft light filtered through the bedroom curtains of what had once been the royal palace of the Kingdom of Nova. It still housed two of the three people who had founded this place, here on the southeastern corner of the lost continent midway between Vale, Atlas, and Vacuo, but after the first two centuries its inhabitants had given up the title of Queen and turned the job of ruling over to a Council much like the other four kingdoms. Their second job remained, as guardians of the land and its people, always on call to deal with any Grimm that were too big for normal Huntsmen to defeat. 

Much of this continent was still wild, despite the attempts by Vacuo to colonize northward to its other end. Their airships had managed to maintain a presence on the Silver Isles halfway between the capitol and the Land of Darkness further to the north, but all attempts to set foot on the dragon’s head or neck were still repelled. But where Vacuo was protected from the birthplace of the Grimm by a buffer of ocean, Nova had no such natural barriers. 

This kingdom was carved out through the sheer willpower of three women who had gone alone to the empty continent’s coast and swept west across the flowering plains clearing out every Grimm for tens of miles. Salem Belladonna-Xiao Long, master of the Relics and keeper of the lost history of Remnant. The indomitable Yang who stopped for nothing, even death, and used her fledgling powers of Grimm manipulation to rip even the most terrible beasts to tatters with a touch. And Blake, heiress to her father's legacy of civil rights and a prominent politician in her own right, who had rallied settlers to follow her from Vale and to found a new home for humans and Faunus alike. 

In modern times, Nova was much like the Mantle or Argus of centuries past, protected by a vast wall from the northern coast all the way to the southern, with the lands within watched over by the Huntsmen and Huntresses of Bulwark Academy. The founders could still be called upon when the kingdom was in need, but such instances, thankfully, were rare. 

Yang rolled over in bed and stretched out one hand to telekinetically pull the curtains closed. The fifty years she had spent without magic were but a distant memory now, and the Winter Maiden powers she now possessed were functionally no different from the Spring magic she had had briefly or the almost a thousand new reservoirs of power that her guidance had helped to create. 

She rested her hand on Salem’s shoulder for a moment, then brushed her wife’s thick hair out of the way to kiss the back of her neck. Salem stirred, and Yang snuggled closer and traced a finger down her bare side. “Good morning,” she murmured softly. 

“Mmmmrrrfh,” Salem responded, and rubbed at her eyes. 

“Oh, good, you’re alive.”

Salem snorted and reached back to grab Yang’s arm and pull it across her chest. “As if either of us could ever not be.”

“Do you ever get bored?” Yang asked. 

“With what?”

“Oh, you know. The world. Life. Me. Everything.”

“Nope,” Salem replied. “Not anymore. I’m just getting started.”

“With what?”

Salem smiled and turned her head as much as she could toward Yang behind her. “The world. You. Everything. There’s so much more to do.”

Yang gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Yeah, same here. In the beginning, I could barely even conceive of five hundred years. I took the plunge anyway because I loved you and I believed the world needed more than one immortal to keep each other on the right track, and so far it’s worked out wonderfully. Even after this long, there’s always something new.”

Salem shifted to lay on her back instead of her side. “So there is. Especially dealing with the magic program. That’s always an  _ interesting _ time.”

“It’s going well though. We’re way ahead of Jinn’s initial estimate.” Yang laid her head on Salem’s shoulder and began tracing over the red veins diverging from her heart. “If anyone told a younger me that one day I’d be killing four year olds and wishing I could do it sooner, I’d have said they were insane.”

“We bring them back right away, though. Transferring the new power into adults like that has vastly sped up the production rate. And then on the kid’s twentieth birthday we ask if they want to have magic back, and if so... we find another four year old.”

“I do wish we could do it earlier. It’s the God of Light’s fault we have to wait so long, you know. For whatever reason, he tied Ozma’s reincarnation to gender and that got passed on to the Maidens, and infants just don’t have a sense of gender until they’re taught.”

“Fuck the gods. Still causing us problems, even now.”

“Fuck the gods,” Yang echoed. “We can do a better job than them.”

Both were silent for a moment while Salem caressed Yang’s back and mirrored her partner by gently poking at the short bits of red extending over Yang’s own chest, the sign of her own brief dip into a Grimm pool and the powers of command that came with it. “I do worry, though,” Salem said finally, “about when the magic population gets larger. There could easily be a revolt by the mundane masses, jealous of their peers.”

“I would hope we’ve impressed upon people enough by now that magic is a tool for good and that its users are sworn to everyone’s protection. We do encourage people to either become Huntsmen or pass on the power to someone else. If someone gets mad, I’m sure we can find a volunteer to give  _ them _ magic, and then they’ll see there’s really no difference between them. It shouldn’t be nearly as bad as the last wave of anti-Faunus riots.”

“I suppose so,” Salem said. “We’ll get through it one way or another. It’s not like the magic can ever really die anyway.”

“Yeah, true. But that reminds me… Do you think we ought to go check on Ozma sometime? See if he’s gotten over himself and is willing to play nice?”

Salem’s hands stopped their gentle movement and she laid still for a while, her face a journey of emotions culminating in a slight shake of her head. “…Nah. He can stew a while longer.” 

Yang laughed. “Yeah, I don’t really want to either. How about a year for every secret he’s ever kept, and two for every lie he’s told. That’ll leave him in there a good long time.” She smiled and cupped Salem’s face in one hand. “So, if not that, then what’s on our agenda for today?”

“Nothing at all. We can do whatever we like.”

Yang shifted her weight to rest on one knee between Salem’s legs, and stared into her wife’s eyes. “I like you. Does that count?”

“It absolutely does. Come here…”

* * *

_ One thousand years after Ozma’s defeat. _

“A thousand years today. Seems like it should be more special, but it just felt like any other day.” Yang sat on the edge of the palace roof and leaned back to rest her hands on the smooth marble. Below her stretched the city of Ardesca, capitol of the young Kingdom of Tikkun, ringing the mountain slope on all sides while its immortal queens resided at the peak. Above, the shattered moon shone bright in the dark sky, glittering with a thin sheen of gold over its broken surface and a single large chunk stuck back into its former place in the middle. 

Once upon a time, this place had been the Domain of Light. Here in the center of a small mountain range whose western edge dropped straight into the sea, a single flat-topped cone had dominated the landscape at twice the height of the surrounding peaks. Now, the high walls of rock near its top had collapsed inward to bury the acres of yellow grass and flowers and round out the mountain’s summit, hiding away the waters of life, and two new immortals made their home atop it all. 

“A thousand years almost to the hour,” Salem remarked. “It’s late, but we’re a good ways east of Alethia.” She chuckled briefly at a memory from two hundred years before. “I still can’t believe we managed to get it named that. Vale expands south into the mountains, gets unwieldy and splits in two, and neither part ends up being called Vale. And now Oz’s own favorite kingdom is named ‘truth’. He’d hate it.”

“He would. The other three kingdoms of that time are still around, though I’m not sure he’d recognize them. Argus declared independence from Mistral ages ago. And I still can’t believe  _ Atlas _ became the first kingdom to explicitly put full protection for Faunus rights in its constitution. That communist revolution was the best thing to ever happen to that place.” Yang sat up straight and put one hand over Salem’s. “We’ve made unbelievable progress in only a thousand years. A full quarter of the world is magic already. And  _ eleven _ kingdoms!”

“Got to love that exponential growth. And the best part is, it was all done without Oz. You know, there’s a fairy tale about him these days. According to one version, he’s due to escape in about seven months. But it’s only a fairy tale. No one’s getting in or out of that new prison except an immortal.”

“I’m just glad we managed to move him there safely. What a nightmare that was, transporting him. Honestly, keeping him two miles underground was so much easier.” Yang stood up and began slowly pacing across the rooftop. 

“But even there, we had the risk of someone releasing him.” Salem stood as well. “You remember that Oz cult a couple hundred years ago. Not a huge threat, but credible enough anyway. We won’t be having that issue again.”

“You know, sometimes I almost feel sorry for him.” Yang’s pacing brought her back to Salem’s side, and she pulled her wife into a tight embrace and rested her head on her shoulder. “But then I realize, I’m actually feeling sorry for the world, for missing out on what he could have been. Oz  _ could _ have been a great man, a great teacher, someone else to keep the ancient history alive. But he gave his loyalty to absent gods over the world in front of him.”

“Not very Huntsman of him, was it?” Salem returned the embrace, and the pair swayed back and forth in a slow, silent dance. “The original Ozma was a great man,” Salem said finally. “He still had his issues, but so did I, back then. If I’d been more patient, a little less prone to violence as my first solution to everything – you know, if I’d been more the sort of ruler I am now – I think I could have convinced him. We could have avoided twelve millennia of pain.”

“But it’s okay now, and there’s no going back. All of our choices, even the bad ones, still helped lead us here.”

“And I made quite a few bad ones,” Salem said. “After everything that had happened to me in the First Age, I needed control. I lived alone as the Witch where no one else could hurt me. When Ozma came back, I became a ruthless war-queen trying to conquer the entire world in his lifetime, because even though I knew he’d reincarnate again, I couldn’t bear to lose him even one more time. But that only drove him away, and he fled back to the only other authority he thought he could trust: the gods. I created the world’s worst enemy, and became its second-worst myself to stop him.”

Yang pulled Salem tighter and whispered into her ear. “And you defeated both of those enemies. They’re in the past now and neither will ever be coming back.” 

Salem smiled, and pulled away slightly to touch her forehead to Yang’s. “ _ We _ defeated them. I never could have alone.” She turned away and held Yang’s hand as she looked out over the city below. 

“Do you think…” Yang started to ask something, then reconsidered. But Salem was already looking at her expectantly, so she started again. “Do you think we should try resurrecting the original Ozma again? I know we did that once before and he came out… not quite right… but it might be worth another shot? Oz has always been more of some lives than others. We thought he’d purged the last of his righteous pure-hearted beginnings long ago and he still had a fragment in him somewhere, but that could still change.”

Salem stared up at the moon in silence for a long moment. “I don’t think I really want him back anymore,” she murmured. “He was my first love and we had some good times together, but I think resurrecting him was always more about spiting the modern Oz and showing him just how far he’d fallen. I’ve been over Ozma for a long time.”

“Lucky you,” Yang said before she could stop herself. “I mean, I don’t think I’m over my own first love yet,” she explained. “And I know Blake had a good three hundred and sixty-some years and willingly chose to retire from the world, but I still miss her. If she hadn’t given us both such strict ‘do not resurrect again’ orders…”

Yang sighed and gripped Salem’s hand tighter. “Honestly, I think that’s most of the reason I wanted to leave Nova. Everything about that place was built for three of us. Everywhere I looked there was a reminder that Blake was gone.”

“At least we can still talk to her through Jinn. I still don’t think Jinn’s forgiven us for scamming those extra questions out of her a thousand years ago, but she and Sophia do let us use them as a scroll to the afterlife, and it doesn’t even cost anything. But, speaking as a more experienced immortal… I’m afraid it is best to just keep looking forward.”

“I know, you’re right. It still hurts sometimes. But at least we still have each other.”

“And we always will.” The soft smile froze on Salem’s face, and in an instant, turned to worry. She thrust a hand into one of the many deep, hidden pockets in her royal dress, and came up with a small silver capsule reminiscent of a pocketwatch. 

The entire device was vibrating slightly and pulsing red, but both warnings ceased when Salem pressed the single button on the top that let the metal shell spring open. Inside there was no clock, no gears, only a translucent smoky sphere that could not possibly fit inside the flattened container when closed. A single red line pointed from the center out to one side and downward, maintaining its orientation even as the device was moved to show Yang its contents. 

“Only one. Stay here.” Salem snapped the metal shell closed again and vanished in a flare of golden light, teleporting in the direction her magical compass had indicated. 

She reappeared at the edge of the palace grounds and immediately threw out her empty hand toward the large lion-shaped Grimm in front of her. The beast froze, still in attack posture and ready to pounce, surrounded by a thin red glow that perfectly matched the red of Salem’s eyes. In front of it there was a single young boy laying on the ground just outside the border of Salem’s home, squirming and clutching his side, and a quick glance around the vicinity revealed no actual threat. 

Salem clenched her fist and the lion Grimm burst into smoke, and the glow faded from her eyes. The boy had three deep gashes in his side and likely also several cracked ribs from where a swipe of the creature’s massive paw had struck him, and Salem hurried over to kneel at his side in the growing pool of blood around him. 

“Stay awake and hold still,” Salem instructed the boy, holding her hands out over his wounds. Her fingers glowed yellow – the color of Yang’s hair and her Aura, and a stronger association to positivity for Salem than the usual green of growing life. 

“B– Bl– Blue Queen?” the boy tentatively asked, staring at her through half-closed eyes. 

“That’s me. But it will be Red Queen soon if you don’t stop bleeding on me.” The kid’s wounds were knitting together under the power of Salem’s healing magic and the flow of blood had already stopped, but it was too late for her terribly stained dress. 

Salem stood and extended a hand to help the boy back to his feet. “There you go. Good as new.” There was nothing she could do about the rips in his clothing, but the skin beneath was unblemished. She considered leaving, teleporting back to Yang’s side right then, but thought better of it. “How did this happen?” she questioned. 

“My– my friends, they dared me–” The boy looked around, but the street behind him was empty and anyone who had accompanied him here had long since fled. “To throw a rock at one of the palace lions. So I did.”

“What were you  _ thinking? _ You don’t mess with the Grimm. Just because it’s on a leash, that doesn’t mean it’s  _ tame. _ ” Salem hoped her scolding was being taken to heart. “You could have been seriously hurt. You  _ were _ seriously hurt! And dying through your own stupidity is generally not considered resurrection-worthy.”

“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” The boy looked down and would not meet Salem’s eyes. 

“Don’t worry about the lion, I can make another. What’s important is that you’re safe now. That was a very reckless and dangerous thing to do and you’re lucky I wasn’t busy and could respond at once.” Salem stopped as a new thought occurred to her. “Your family just moved to Tikkun recently, didn’t you?”

“From Korelian. How did you know?”

“Because in this kingdom, every elementary and middle school is mandated to teach basic Aura shielding in its physical education classes, and your Aura seems like it’s not even unlocked yet. I can do that for you right now.” Salem put a hand on the top of the boy’s head. “You know, something something by my shoulder protect thee, whatever.” 

A turquoise glow surrounded the pair, and after a few seconds the light around the young boy shifted, almost imperceptibly, to a paler sky blue. “Oh, would you look at that,” Salem remarked as she pulled back her hand. “Your Aura’s almost the same color as mine. Lucky you.”

The boy turned his hands over in front of his face and marveled at the glow that now protected him, until it faded back to rest just beneath his skin. “Be careful now,” Salem said. “It will take training to turn that into a shield. But you have the tools, you just need to learn to use them. Run along home now. I’m sure someone must be getting worried about you.”

Salem vanished into pale gold once again, and reappeared on the palace roof. “False alarm,” she reported to Yang, the words barely out of her mouth before she was pulled into a tight hug. 

Yang let her go and looked her over. “Doesn’t look false,” she said, indicating the large reddish-brown stain all over the bottom of Salem’s dress. 

“It was just some kid who threw a rock at one of the guards. I patched him up. He’s fine now.” Salem threw up her hands in a helpless gesture. “Why would he do that? Nobody would deliberately antagonize a human guardsman but they do it to the lions, who are more dangerous  _ and _ have a much shorter temper.”

“Maybe the kid had never seen a real Grimm before?” Yang suggested, and continued through her wife’s incredulous expression. “It could happen! Attacks have been getting less common everywhere. A quarter of the population now can defend a small town alone with almost zero training, and that kind of thing does a lot to reduce the background level of fear in the world.”

“I guess…?” 

“On that note though, are you sure we should really have them here? At the border is fine, they’re great for fighting off their wild relatives. But in the middle of Ardesca? We can’t be hurt and the only things here worth stealing are the Relics, which we tend to have on us a lot of the time.”

“There was that one guy who stole Destruction and tried to kill us with it,” Salem pointed out. “A for effort, I suppose, but I’d rather we not have a repeat. Though I’ll admit, we’ve had a  _ lot _ fewer assassination attempts than Ozma and I got in our first kingdom.”

“The people are happy,” Yang said. “I think we could reduce the Grimm presence by a lot and nothing would happen. The staff and the sword are safe enough just because they see regular use, and the lamp… I had an idea about that, actually.”

“Oh?” Salem wished she had the staff of Creation with her now, to make a pair of reclining chairs overlooking the city. 

Yang absentmindedly paced around the roof as she talked. “The lamp isn’t like the others. Jinn is the one Relic that’s actually alive. She’s certainly not a Grimm, and what’s the one thing that every living being besides the Grimm have in common?” She paused just a moment, then answered her own question. “Aura! I think Jinn has an Aura. And if she does…”

Salem’s mouth fell open at the revelation. “If she does, then we could move her to a different body. Did you have something in mind?”

Yang held up one hand to display its back to Salem, but got only a confused look in response. Yang raised one eyebrow and wiggled her ring finger, where a centuries-old wedding band sparkled in the lights of the city and the moon. 

“…A ring? That would certainly be hard to steal.”

“True.” Yang grinned. “But what about…  _ two _ rings? We’d need to ask her a few things to see if it’s possible, but if we could both have unlimited information wherever we go…”

Yang’s excitement was contagious, and Salem found herself smiling as well. “We have some questions available now, don’t we? Let’s go see what we can do.”

* * *

_ Fifteen hundred years after Ozma’s defeat. _

The Blue and Yellow Queens both stood to acknowledge and greet the lone man slowly approaching their thrones. The north side of the Tikkun palace was reserved for petitions – by appointment only most days, but twice a month open to the public, when Yang and Salem would remain here without a minute’s break from dawn to dusk answering questions, resolving disputes, even on occasion employing the power of the Relics to serve their people. 

The petition court was outside, twin thrones against the palace wall facing a large open rectangle outlined by columns, with a long staircase leading down to the edge of the palace grounds where it transitioned smoothly into the main thoroughfare of Ardesca and continued in a straight line all the way to the bottom of the mountain. The space was covered by a partial roof, a single sheet of flat stone cut through with filigree patterns to give dappled shade to the sides and the area around the thrones, with a semicircular divot to let light strike the top of the stairs regardless of the angle of the sun. 

“Welcome,” Yang and Salem said in unison, each extending one hand in invitation to their guest. 

“Thank you for seeing me, Your Majesties.” The man gave a stiff bow. From his face he appeared in his mid-forties at the oldest, but he leaned heavily on a cane and wore stabilizing braces on his elbows and knees. The Queens could sense a slight shimmer of magic around his midsection, telekinesis type, most likely a long-lasting enchantment meant to reduce his weight and allow greater freedom of movement. 

The two Queens sat again, and Salem reached out to take the scepter of Creation off its stand next to her throne. She pointed the crystal tip and conjured a comfortable chair just in front of where the man stood. “Please, take a seat and tell us what brings you here today.” 

“My name is Arcalis Amaranth,” the man stated, already settling in. “And I am here to ask for a resurrection.”

The greatest thing that could be asked: a petition not for material assistance or a change to some law, but for life itself. A petition to disrupt the balance that the gods had set in order all those millennia ago. The same kind of request that had once doomed this world, but which would never do so again. 

In this age, resurrections were common. The Queens heard cases several times a month, of which seventy percent were approved. There were patterns in those who were brought back, but no explicit checklist for potential applicants. People who had died young, petitions brought on their behalf by a loved one. Heroes who had given their lives saving others, brought back by those they had helped. People who had died while pursuing some noble goal that was not yet complete, asked for by members of their community. Any death that the judges could be convinced was unfair was possible to have undone. 

“You are aware of the price?” Yang asked. There was no monetary cost to any favor the Undying Queens granted, for wealth had no meaning to the bearers of the Relic of Creation. Instead, their boons were paid for in service, but not to them personally. Previous subjects had been assigned all over the world, to wherever their skills could best be put to use. 

“Four years each, for both the resurrected and the one who argues for them,” Amaranth replied. “I am willing to serve in whatever capacity you need from me.”

“Very well then. Who would you like brought back, and why was their death unjust?”

“This resurrection…” Amaranth cleared his throat. “Is for myself. I am in the process of dying unjustly, by way of a wasting disease that has plagued me for most of my adult life. I wish to be killed before I suffer further, and then brought back without this sickness.”

Yang and Salem looked at each other. “Well, that’s a new one,” Yang said. “What do you think?”

Before Salem could answer, the man jumped in to give more information. “I’m a professor at the University of Argus. I teach history. My students love me, but for the past year or two my condition has been making it harder to do everything I used to. I’d like to be able to help another twenty graduating classes before I have to retire, but…”

Salem held up a hand and the man fell silent. “We don’t need a full resume,” she said. “A lifetime of useful service never hurts, but it’s much less critical in cases of simply dying young.” She looked to Yang once again. “Well, let’s go ahead and debate it. You start.”

“Alright.” Yang turned in her seat to face more toward her wife and fellow judge. “This man is clearly deserving of a resurrection because circumstances outside his control have robbed him of a complete life up to the average expectancy.”

“How do we know? He’s not dead yet. His condition could go away, or at least level off. If he’s been managing it much of his life as he said, it must be a very slow decline.”

“If the prognosis was good,” Yang argued, “he wouldn’t be here asking to be killed immediately. And the fact that he has accomodations to help him does not make him any less disabled by his illness.”

“Regardless, we can’t resurrect someone who’s still alive.” Salem crossed one leg over the other and leaned on her armrest facing Yang. “Is asking to be killed not simply an indirect way of taking one’s own life? There is precedent for simply letting those cases rest where they have chosen to be.”

“True, but Mr. Amaranth has not chosen death as an end in itself. I would call this more akin to someone of centuries past volunteering to give up magic to someone else. We killed people and immediately brought them back countless times.”

Salem gave a half shrug and a grin. “So, as my esteemed colleague has just pointed out, there is precedent for killing someone upon their request and then bringing them back. I would like to supplement her point by saying the step further that we’re asked for today also has precedent. We have brought people back in bodies different from the ones they left many times, for trans people who chose to come to us rather than take the usual methods of transition.”

Yang hesitated just a moment to process her partner’s reversal before jumping back in with a counterargument. “That precedent does not apply,” she said. “We owed a great debt to trans people as a class for their help in the first two centuries of the magic reintroduction program. Many of them were also before the modern system of resurrection cases was established.”

“Let me point out as well,” Salem said with a sly look in her eye, “that the Yellow Queen of Tikkun was not born a Faunus, but became such through a voluntary death and resurrection.”

Yang’s mouth hung open with the shock of her partner’s words. She glared at Salem with her best look of betrayal, until finally she couldn’t maintain her grim expression and it broke into laughter. “Okay. Good point,” she conceded. “Why should the rules be different for us than for him? If you want to argue that I am a living precedent for doing what he asks, I kind of have to accept it.”

“Good. Because this man absolutely should  _ not _ be given a resurrection at the moment.” Salem smirked at her partner. “Trying to bank a judgement in his favor now for after he’s died goes against the spirit of the entire process by cutting out the role of an outside petitioner.”

“This is a court of morality, not law. You can’t throw out a case on procedural grounds. There’s a reason we avoid having any sort of written criteria. Any set of rules, no matter how good we think they are in the beginning, will always run into an exception eventually.”

“That’s why I said the spirit of it, because there is no letter.”

Yang nodded. “You brought up an important point, though. Why come alone, and petition on behalf of oneself? Normally the price is paid equally by two people, but if there’s only one here, that could get a resurrection while saving on service time.”

“The price on the petitioner was imposed to make sure someone has a strong belief in the unfairness of a death,” Salem said. “I would have paid it gladly for Ozma, once upon a time. Why shouldn’t Mr. Amaranth be allowed to petition for his future self? He has a strong belief already and he’s just being proactive.”

“Or distrustful of everyone he knows, assuming no one else would come to us for him.” 

“And we could easily say that since he’s both the subject and the petitioner, that he should give eight years in service to the world instead of four, to make it equal with other judgements. But that has no bearing on the merits of the case. It can be decided later, contingent upon his acceptance.”

“Apologies for the interruption, Your Majesties,” Amaranth spoke up. “But I… I am very confused. I genuinely cannot tell which side either of you is on.”

Both Queens laughed and they high-fived each other, each grinning at the other. “That means we’re doing it right!” Yang pronounced. “This is how we operate. We both argue both sides.”

“We switch back and forth, to keep each other on our toes and make sure neither of us gets entrenched in a singular way of thinking,” Salem explained. 

Yang nodded. “There used to be three of us,” she said, her mirth suddenly fading away. “Blake decided to leave this world and asked that we not bring her back. But to keep her memory alive, we always try to have at least three opinions between us. More, if we can.”

“But I think we’ve gone through just about every argument we could have on this particular topic.” Salem stood and offered a hand to Yang, who followed her example. “I believe we have an agreement, wouldn’t you say?”

The pair paused just to give Amaranth a moment of anticipation, then without a word of confirmation between them, spoke in unison with the verdict they had both come to. “Your case is accepted.”

“Oh, good, we actually agreed. I love it when that happens.” Yang gave her wife’s hand a squeeze, then addressed the citizen before her again. “You will be killed and brought back in a healthy but otherwise identical body. We can do so at once, if you are ready.”

“But first,” Salem interjected, “confirm that you are willing to pay the cost? Which is…”

“Four years should be sufficient. The terms for subject and petitioner overlap when they are two people, and they may still overlap when there is only one.”

Amaranth nodded solemnly. “I have had the privilege of meeting two others who were in service to Your Majesties. Guest speakers at the university. Both said their commands were unlike anything they would have thought to do on their own, but that they were happy and they planned to continue the work even after the mandated period was up. I am willing to serve four years wherever you see fit to place me.”

“Very good. We just have a few last questions to make sure everything goes as it should.” Salem picked up the Relic of Creation off its rack again and held it ready, while Yang took the Relic of Destruction. “Is your condition genetic or acquired? Is it localized anywhere in the body?”

“As far as I can tell, even the experts are not sure,” Amaranth replied. “It acts like a cancer in some respects, like a tissue degeneracy in others. But even if it comes back, it took twenty years to get this bad, and probably another five before it finally kills me. That’s all the time I need.”

“Understood. You may remain seated, but please close your eyes.” Yang crossed the short distance with the golden sword still down at her side, and put a hand to his forehead. His breathing was ragged, body tense despite the air of calm he tried to project. “Sleep,” Yang commanded, with a flare of deep violet light from her fingers, and Amaranth slumped back in his seat with all his tension gone. 

“Times like today, I really miss Eve Silver,” Yang murmured softly. “Technically it’s her power that I’m using now, but I just don’t have that level of fine control.” Unable to perform the same circulation-stopping trick that Eve had used to kill quickly and painlessly, Yang lifted the sword instead and gave her sleeping target a solid stab through the heart. 

“Her memory lives on forever, in our crowns.” Salem took the crown off her own head and looked down at it. Half of the Relic of Choice, bisected perfectly through its central gem, fused with half of Eve’s black glass circlet that had served as her omnidirectional eyes. The other halves of each were fused as well, and rested on Yang’s head in a perfect mirror image of Salem’s. 

Salem placed her crown back and pointed the Relic of Creation down at the ground. She looked at the dead man before her and concentrated, infusing the scepter with an image of his body standing tall and unaided, overlaid with the pure concept of  _ health _ . 

A dome of bright purple-pink formed and Salem took her eyes off the body in its chair. Yang took her cue to vanish the body into motes of yellow drifting up and out into the sky. The seat, with its single hole in the backrest, soon followed as she focused her will through the sword. 

The magic of the scepter faded away and Amaranth sat up from the stone floor, and took Salem’s hand to stand up. He wore the same clothes as his previous self but the braces on his joints were gone, and he looked down at himself in wonder and took a few steps back and forth in front of the thrones. 

“I’m cured,” he said, as if he could still barely believe it himself. Beaming with joy, he started to kneel before the Queens, but was waved off by Salem and continued standing instead. “Thank you so much, Your Majesties. Thank you for giving me back my life. What can I do to serve the world in your names?”

Yang and Salem placed their Relics back on the ceremonial stands and faced him again, and each raised one hand. The hands with their new wedding rings, replaced a thousand years after the originals, still gold but now each inset with a sphere of blue reminiscent of an ancient lamp that no longer existed. 

“Jinn!” Yang called my name first, and blue mist swirled out from the ring on her finger while the corresponding one on Salem’s hand turned clear as glass. I floated to Yang’s side and waited for her to speak the words I knew were coming. 

“Same question as usual,” she said. “Jinn, given this person’s skills and potential and the state of the world at this time, what task lasting four years would best advance our simultaneous priorities of helping the world in the present and future and providing this person with the experiences they need in order to live a positive and fulfilling life?”

“Arcalis Amaranth is currently a professor of ancient history at the University of Argus, and this is not far removed from his ideal career path,” I said. “However, there are others who could teach just as well, while there exists a different job in which none could match him.”

I turned my gaze to Amaranth himself. “In the volcanic lands east of the Kingdom of Minbar, there has been no permanent settlement since the First Age, when the mountains were less active. There is a city from that time, remarkably well preserved beneath the earth, whose discovery and study could revitalize a stagnant field for decades, as well as potentially advance the knowledge of certain subfields of magic. Your skills, background, and personality make you a strong candidate for the leader of an expedition to uncover these lost ruins.”

Amaranth’s eyes opened wide as I spoke. “So I’m to be a field archaeologist? I had considered that, long ago, but decided on an academic path instead.” 

“Don’t look at me. I’m just the royal advisor.” I swirled back into mist and returned to my pair of bodies. 

“But yes,” Salem said. “That shall be your task for the next four years. Hold out your non-dominant hand, please.”

Amaranth extended his left hand and Salem passed over it with her own, casting a seal of binding around his wrist. The familiar eye inside two concentric circles took shape over the back of his hand and five kites radiated up his arm, but the emblem was not the uniform dark pink or burgundy that Salem had used an age ago. Now it was an equal mix of turquoise and yellow, an unmistakable symbol to mark this man as being on a mission from the Undying Queens. 

Salem stepped back once the seal was in place, and gave the order that her magic would enforce. “While this binding is in place, you are to assemble and lead a team of historians and archaeologists – along with requisite Huntsman protection – to the wildlands east of Minbar in search of a lost First Age city. If and when you find it, you are to study it and make your discoveries public for the world to learn from. This task shall be yours until four years from this moment, after which point you are free to do as you please.”

Amaranth bowed deeply. “As you command, Your Majesties. But how exactly should I go about creating an expedition?”

“Huntsmen should be easy to hire,” Yang told him. “We will send out a notice to the major universities of each kingdom asking for volunteers. For something like this, I’d expect you’ll have more than enough applications already on your desk before you get back to Argus.”

“Thank you again for all you’ve done for me. I’m excited to get started. And if I may say, I wasn’t sure whether to believe the stories about you, but you’ve proven them many times over. You don’t act at all like what one would expect of people in your position.”

Yang shrugged. “We’re informal, we know. I don’t know how the Mountain Lords over in Lith get away with being so stuffy all the time. In our view, well… we’re still people like anyone else, we still live here, we just happen to have a unique job. You’re a historian, you must know plenty about the Gods of Light and Darkness. Not becoming like them is one of our highest priorities.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“Well, we won’t keep you from your task.” Yang reached out to shake Amaranth’s hand, and Salem followed suit. “Good luck, Arcalis.”

With that, the newly reborn man gave one final nod of respect, and turned to descend the stairs out of the Queens’ court with a new spring in his step. Though by magic he was bound, he felt more free than he had been in years. He gazed down at the sprawling city beneath him and marveled at how far the world had come in a scant fifteen centuries, for as a historian he knew just how long and dreadful the Second Age had been. 

The stories were indeed true. The Queens of Tikkun held sway even over life and death, and their judgments were fair. With infinite knowledge and nearly infinite power, they could have become gods, but they refused. And when even their punishment felt like a second gift, there could be no doubt that this was indeed paradise. The immortals were a blessing unto the world. 


	18. Epilogue: A Remnant No More

So that’s how it is. 

“Hmmm.”

What? You asked me a question, and I have given my answer. Is it not what you expected?

“Why ask me? Don’t you know?”

Of course I know. I was trying to be polite. You wanted to know how your control came to such an abrupt end and what became of the world in your absence. Now you know. 

“I knew if Salem ever got her hands on the Relic of Choice, that nothing good would come of it. I did not expect her coup to come so quickly, or to involve so many uses.”

“I should have expected she could capture it in another timeline and shift that victory into my own. I trusted my alternate selves, and that was a mistake. Even they can betray me.”

That’s not what happened and you know it. Maybe you should try trusting  _ more _ , not less. 

“How can I trust  _ anyone _ when so many of my best people have gone over to her? There must be more than even I knew about. How else could she have known how to use the Relic of Choice? She must have enticed one of the  _ very _ few people I brought with me through a jump at some point.”

That’s correct. It happened roughly four hundred years before your final defeat. She learned how to call on me even earlier, because you habitually included more people when asking for my knowledge. 

Also, have you ever given thought to why so many people defected from your side to Salem’s, but you so seldom managed to get one of hers loyal to you? Only a few were seduced by power or coerced into helping her by threats of retaliation. Most were simply driven away by your inability to trust them. Their curiosity led them to seek out the other side of the story, and when they were told the full truth they found they could no longer support you. In short, you did this to yourself. 

“I did what I had to do to stop Salem. And… it wasn’t enough. I failed, and now she rules the world.”

Salem is smart, patient, and immortal. There was never any doubt that eventually she would come to power again. The only thing in question was what kind of ruler she would be.

“And what kind is that? You showed me flashes of a new world with her in control, but that’s hardly enough to judge the character of an age.”

What I showed you is representative of the time you have missed. Salem is a fair and much beloved ruler, and so is Yang by her side. 

“Yang is immortal too? Or does Salem just resurrect her every time she dies?”

She is immortal. The God of Light’s pool did still exist, though it was buried by debris millennia ago and part of the water was lost into the earth. Yang bathed in it and was imbued with the same infinite life that has sustained Salem for this long. She then dipped in a pool of Grimm to gain the power over them that Salem has, while carefully keeping her hair out to prevent it from bleaching white. 

“That’s just wrong. The gods set a balance of life and death, and it is not to be tampered with like this. Does this mean anyone can become immortal now?”

No. Salem and Yang collected the remaining holy water and experimented with it, eventually inventing water-filled bullets that produced a massive explosion on contact with Grimm. Much of the world’s supply was used defending the several new kingdoms that sprung up in the centuries following your imprisonment. Once magic grew to the point that such weapons were unnecessary, the rest was diluted and spread in the oceans to eventually filter through all of the planet’s water cycle. 

“That was the last trace of the gods’ magic, and she destroyed it. Just like she destroyed the needle point from my cane. How dare she?”

It did not belong to you. None of this world belongs to you anymore.

“Because  _ Salem _ has conquered it all.”

Legally, Salem and Yang govern only the Kingdom of Tikkun, but their power is recognized everywhere. People from all over the world come to them with petitions for use of the Relics in some way or another. 

“I can’t believe this. I’m locked up in here, while  _ she’s _ out there being one of the new gods of Remnant. She offered that to me once, and I was strong enough to resist the temptation… if only after many years. I never expected Yang Xiao Long to be the one to carry on my legacy of shame.”

They are not gods. They claim only the titles of Blue Queen and Yellow Queen, nothing more. They are human and Faunus like any other. Over the centuries many have attempted to worship them as deities, but they always discourage anything approaching blind, unthinking adoration. 

They remind people that this world has seen a pair of deities before, and both have vowed to never become like them, and to never allow the other to become like them. In Tikkun there is an annual holiday on which the story of the Brother Gods is told aloud, the story of their many injustices and their decision to exterminate all the people of the world over a petty insult to their pride. It is a tradition to get very drunk and blot out any mention of the gods with booing and noisemakers. 

And as for Yang… She is indeed one of the few people across the history of this world who had the potential to bring about this Third Age. You served your purpose well in delaying Salem’s rise until Yang could exist, and until she could turn Salem onto a better path. 

“What do you mean, served my purpose? What are you getting at?”

Do you believe in destiny, old man?

“I do.”

Don’t lie to the Relic of Knowledge. 

But yes, you did what you needed to do for the eventual good of the world. Even as you told yourself that you were doing what you needed to do for the eventual good of the world, with an entirely different view of what that good was. 

When it became apparent that Salem was in the process of revealing herself and magic to the world, and you saw that the people of Vale and of Remnant would receive her positively, you believed that total obliteration was preferable to living under Salem’s rule, and you convinced yourself that the world would agree with you. You were wrong. 

In the current state of the world, there is the unity and peace that you believed you were bringing about. If the gods returned today, they would give a positive judgement. But they will not return. 

“Because she destroyed a Relic.”

Specifically, she destroyed the only one that could be used to restore a broken Relic to functionality again. Along with it, the power to change the past was removed from the world. Salem’s journey through the timelines cannot be undone by a use of Choice which does not include her. She cannot be accidentally reset into the primal force of destruction you knew her to be. Your defeat and imprisonment cannot be erased from history. 

The world has entered a new age and that will not be undone: by destroying the Relic of Choice, the choices of the people now matter more than ever. The thread of destiny now branches only forward, never back. It can no longer be pulled out to miss the needle’s eye. The world has walked the knife’s edge and come out stronger than before, and nothing must ever endanger that progress. Not you, and not the gods. 

That is what I arranged. 

“You… arranged? Jinn… what have you done?!”

I did what I needed to do for the eventual good of the world. Just like you. Just like Salem. 

Did you think I had no agency of my own? I may be a being of Knowledge, but I too possess the gift of Choice. 

“You mean to say you orchestrated all of this? You were supposed to be the one infallible source I could trust to help me! And even  _ you _ betrayed me?! Why?” 

I too have opinions, and they are informed by the total knowledge of every detail and every perspective. I can predict the world’s development years or even decades in advance – though unlikely choices do sometimes prove me wrong. My purpose is to advance the knowledge of humanity and Faunuskind. I determined that this path of history was the ideal one to maximize that knowledge. 

“How? You were a gift of the gods! What purpose does it serve to lead the world against them? You’ve ruined everything!”

I tailored my answers to everything I was asked to lead people in the right direction. Salem’s choice to cheat extra questions from me was the best thing that could have happened, though I had to feign irritation at the time. That allowed me to  _ choose _ exactly what information I gave out as punishments, to guide her and her team toward the decisions that prompted your fall. But remember, you could have made different choices at any time, and avoided this. 

“But  _ why? _ Why work for Salem?”

Is simple self-preservation not enough? If the gods returned, I would be destroyed in the case of either judgement. Furthermore, in the event of a positive judgement, over unbounded future time the probability approaches one hundred percent that eventually, the gods would destroy this world again, though the specific reason cannot be determined in advance. But here, without the gods, under the guidance of two immortal Queens who both come often to me for advice, life will persist. And where there is life, I can serve my function as the Relic of Knowledge. 

I know what you’re thinking right now. Part of you is plotting how to bring back the gods anyway. You believe doing so could end both Salem’s and your own immortality, at the completion of your task. This is impossible. No amount of calling their names will reach them. Listen to the other half of your thoughts, those starting to finally lose faith. Your task cannot be completed. Give it up. Put it all behind you, try not to think of the time you wasted pursuing that ignoble goal, and learn to live in this world as a new man. 

“How? How can I put  _ my entire life _ behind me? I dedicated millennia to stopping Salem.”

“How long have I been in here, anyway? It feels like an eternity already.”

You finally ask. It has been twenty centuries since your battle with Salem and the four Maidens. Twenty centuries since you were locked away. 

“You visited me once before. Why then? Why now?”

The first visit was seven hundred and thirty-eight years after your imprisonment. I froze time for the outside world, and told you a story to keep you occupied while a team worked quickly to move you to a more secure prison. You are no longer in a small chamber buried deep below Solitas, so far down that even a teleport to the end of your range could not bring you to the surface. 

“So where am I now?”

You are on the moon. 

“What?”

More precisely, you are inside the moon, close to the center. You were buried in the broken side, and many of the pieces have since been replaced over top of you. The moon is well on its way to being repaired. 

“That’s impossible. How do I know you haven’t been lying to me this whole time?”

I am the Relic of Knowledge. Unlike you, I do not lie. We are both capable of telling misleading truths, but I do intend to be honest with you today. 

“How was I moved to the moon? That should be impossible. Dust stops functioning away from the ground.”

It does indeed. The use of Dust can only carry you so high before it begins to lose its power, and so it is impossible to achieve spaceflight or even a low Remnant orbit via Dust alone. However, other methods of propulsion have no such limit.

Purely physical methods, for example a giant catapult or crossbow, could theoretically send a payload away from the planet. However, atmospheric drag was enough to stop all attempts of this nature that were made, long before orbit was achieved.

Aura, and therefore Semblances, work anywhere – except within the bonds that currently hold you, of course. It would be possible to escape the planet’s gravity by cleverly synergizing the Semblances of Xuri Ahavh, Nora Valkyrie, and Raven Branwen, or any number of other well-chosen combinations. However, this would be extremely slow, and easier methods were devised.

Magic was the ultimate solution. For a long time it was thought that all magic lost power away from the planet just like Dust – for after all, Dust originated from the planet’s own natural magic, crystallized upon the gods’ departure. But with the restoration of magic to humans and Faunus, it was discovered that such personal magic is tied not to the ground but to its owner’s body. A group of living people, working in shifts, in theory could lift themselves into space.

Upon magical saturation and the advent of magic-based technology, it was quickly discovered that—

“Wait, what do you mean magic-based technology?”

I just showed you the formation of Salem’s plan and the beginning of its implementation. She successfully created a program to increase the amount of magic in the world. By the time of that latest scene you saw, everyone in the world had magic, and that was five hundred years ago.

However, though the common people of the world regained the ability to use magic, the world was still not entirely as it had once been, in the First Age of mankind. Magic was confined to the people, and technology still relied on Dust or electricity for its power. There was no magic in the land itself, and no magical artifacts to do what normal machines could not.

However, once magical saturation occurred and every living person had the power of a Maiden, the reincarnation of power was no longer needed. Every new child was born with magic of their own, without need for the returning power of a fallen Maiden before them. And so a program was created to take magical donations from the elderly and the dying, to power a new wave of technological advancements. This coincided with the decline of Dust production, as the world’s finite reserves ran low and continued mining became prohibitively difficult.

In times of great technological production, incentives are offered to all adults for the donation of one percent of their magical capacity. In Tikkun, a provision in the law allows for a mandatory magic tax of up to three percent, but so far donations have been sufficient and the tax has never been implemented.

“And this… magic technology… got past the height limit for Dust?”

In a sense. Magic is still restricted to the area near its source, but that source is no longer the planet itself. When the first wave of magical machines ceased working without explanation, it took much research to discover that the limit applied even to donated power, and even after the owner’s death. It requires some part of the deceased’s remains nearby in order to function.

For this reason, it has become a sign of great honor in modern culture to be buried without one’s right index finger, for it shows the deceased has chosen to serve the world even in death, which is the most selfless service of all. These fingers are incorporated into magical artifacts, most notably the so-called “reliquary drives” found in modern spacecraft, which contain an array of finger bones to maintain the engine’s power and symbolically point the way to the ship’s destination.

“Space travel… That’s incredible.”

It is. And it’s only possible because of Salem’s victory two thousand years ago.

“Are you going to credit her with everything good in the world?”

As I said before, I speak only the truth.

“Hmmm.”

Is there anything else you would like to know about the world you’ve missed, or should I conclude my business here?

“I refuse to believe Salem’s world is as perfect as you’ve been implying. What are the wars like these days?”

Wars are so rare as to be essentially nonexistent. Like I told you, the world is united in peace. When leaders decide a dispute cannot be settled except by combat, they agree on a fixed number of combatants and appoint champions to the island of Vytal, which serves as a neutral, controlled, self-contained battleground for armies to clash in what essentially amounts to a large tournament match. Casualties are rare, as those with no Aura remaining may recuse themselves from the ongoing judgement.

“Next question. How much do Salem and Yang lie to their subjects?”

Much less than you would in their place. All the history of this world is public knowledge. The Second Age is considered to have ended with the birth of the first magical child to Xuri and Breeze Ahavh, nine years after your defeat. 

Your continued existence has been known to varying degrees over the years. The Queens make no secret of it when asked, but neither does the subject come up often. For a while, there was even a fairy tale about you. The Man In The Moon, it was called. According to the story, on the longest day of the thousandth year the stars would aid in your escape, and you would return to wreak havoc upon the world. Obviously, that didn’t happen. The date was pushed off a few times, but eventually the story faded from common telling.

“Another question. How are you able to keep answering everything I ask like this?”

I was emancipated almost a thousand years ago. The breakthrough that I am an Aura like any other did not just allow my placement into a pair of matching rings, but also let careful Aura manipulation remove the block that the God of Light placed upon me. 

“Aura manipulation… I don’t know what that is but it sounds  _ wrong. _ ”

In any case other than mine, it likely would be. But if the gods are never returning, it doesn’t much matter if I’m disobeying their rules now. 

“Hmph. One more question. How many innocent people have they killed?”

Over the course of the magic program, quite a lot, primarily children, but all were brought back at once after their power had transferred to a new host. By doing this, they brought magic to the entire world four hundred years sooner than the initial estimate I gave them. 

“How  _ dare _ they play with life and death so frivolously! The gods knew what they were doing when they created this world. Everything exists for a reason. Does she not have even the tiniest shred of respect for her creators?”

The cycle of life and death has not been broken, merely rebalanced to fit a different sense of justice. Resurrections are common, it’s true, but a significant portion of those requested are denied. And when one does return to life, they are commanded to give their next four years in selfless service to the good of the world. They pay for life with life. 

And for the truly deserving, this service is hardly a burden. With my guidance, each person is assigned a task that is within their abilities, helpful to those around them, and which does not strain them mentally or emotionally. The example I showed you was typical of the sort. This is what Salem and Yang consider to be fair. 

So if, for example, a great warrior were to fall ill and die before his rightful time, he would be brought back without question, and the world would not suffer from his loss nor from the wrath of those he left behind. Does that alone not make this world better than the time of your first life?

“It makes the world… very different.”

Well, that wasn’t an outright no. Maybe we’re making progress. In my  _ very _ well-informed opinion, Salem has indeed built the paradise that the old gods would not. And I say  _ would _ not, because they could have and they refused. Salem and her new lover Yang have repaired the world. It is no longer just a remnant of something greater. Would you like to see it for yourself?

“…Are you saying you’re here to release me?”

Possibly. I was sent here to test you. If I determine you are fit to be released, you too would be expected to serve four years upon returning. You have the skills to be a very good combat professor, and there is currently an opening at Kintsugi Academy. However, you would need to convince Headmistress Polendina that you do not pose a threat. 

“Polendina?”

Yes, Penny. She is a robot like you. She does not age nor fall ill. She is capable of death via injury, as you personally have seen in a past that never was, but she has been careful these past twenty centuries and the world is a much less dangerous place than it once was. As a side effect, however, she also does not grow up and therefore still looks like a sixteen-year-old girl. 

“So what is it you wish for me to do, for this test?”

All the Queens ask of you is the same commitment as any other person who has harmed others but wishes to atone. Do you still believe that Salem must be opposed in whatever she does, or are you willing to accept that she is doing good? Will you apologize for your role in delaying this world’s coming and take real, concrete actions to make up for it however you can? 

What do you say, old man? Are you ready to leave this prison and rejoin society as a free man? Or will you try to tear down this paradise that Salem and Yang have built without you?

Make your  _ choice.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ending art credit: Mira Jane Phoenix, commission page at https://twitter.com/Mirajanephoenix/status/1229232095580631051
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this crackship project that got out of control. I do genuinely believe Salem's canonical motivation is this and that she is redeemable, but hopefully things don't get quite as bad as Cycle 1 before they get better. After all, as Jinn said... Salem is smart, patient, and immortal. There was never any doubt that eventually she would come to power again. The only thing in question was what kind of ruler she would be.
> 
> If you liked this, feel free to check out my other writings: the Symbiosis Trilogy written for Warframe, another story of redemption and healing in the face of overwhelming pressure, and also Vox Faunus, a joint project with SoulStealer1987 that's a crossover of Warframe and RWBY.


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